the futile stupidity of our war on terror

I'm writing this in response to this news story. I don't know how long that link will last, so to summarize it, it's a story about Bush telling the same old story that Iraq is at the forefront of the war on terror.

I'm sick of the idiocy behind that, and astounded and deeply, deeply discouraged that anyone believes that nonsense anymore. All evidence tells us that under the regime of Saddam Hussein Iraq had absolutely no ties to al-Qaida. However after we destroyed the infrastructure of their country and brought them the joys of total civil chaos, THEN al-Qaida moved in.
We gave them a country that was ripe for the taking, and we loaded it up with vulnerable troops that they could strike out at.

How does anyone not know that since we began the so called "war on terror" terrorist causes worldwide have gained considerable power? Are we that dumbed down by the actions of a draft dodging war monger president that we're unable to understand that killing scores of people alone does not constitute victory?


To be fair the news story I referenced does quote some people who have a slightly wider world view than that. They managed to find someone who actually remembered that before Iraq we fought the Taliban in Afghanistan, but unlike Iraq as soon as the fighting slowed down we pulled out so fast we left vapor trails in our wake. The Taliban, who were seen as such a threat, are back in Afghanistan. So why isn't Bush telling us that the mission in Afghanistan isn't complete? Why the single minded tunnel vision focused squarely on a third world nation who's only resource is oil.

Oh yeah. Silly me.

I just want to know why the incompetence of the war in Iraq to date hasn't lead to widespread demands to remove Bush from power. How can we not see how much his actions have weakened the nation? It seems we've become increasingly willing to accept senseless civilian casualties so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at the lack of outrage over the unknown numbers of innocent civilians killed as a result of our invasion. But if we're so concerned about our own country why does it not matter that we've strained our mighty military, funded by an amount of money that no single other nation can come close to matching, so much money that entire groups of other nations can't match, to the breaking point in simply attempting to occupy a single third world nation where the primary resistance is people so desperate that they're willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to strike out at their perceived enemy.
Russia is increasingly showing signs of regressing to the state it was in during the Cold War. North Korea and Iran threaten to bring nuclear weapons into the sphere of global conflict. All around the Muslim world rage is boiling over as a result of our actions in Iraq, supporting a new generation of extremists bent on making the west and the USA in particular feel the force of their rage.

And we're still Stuck in Iraq trying to police a civil war we touched off.

Let's ignore the question of whether we should be staying or leaving for the moment. Let's hold the man who got us into this situation accountable for his actions. And get him and his entire corrupt administration removed from office so that we can find someone else, someone sufficiently in touch with reality to understand that committing our military to a guerrilla war that could last for a decade or more and enraging the Muslim world is not the way to work for our security.

Come on. The Republicans tried to get Clinton removed from office because he lied about receiving oral sex from an intern. That was clearly not his finest hour, but compared to lying about intelligence in order to push the country into a war that's resulted in the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, he might as well have been a celibate priest.