Wishing and wanting do not make an expectation so. This belief is the province of children. And, thus, as George Bush announces his new strategy for Iraq, there are many, including military experts, who understand not only that this war cannot be won militarily, it cannot be won at all.
The president’s policy to surge an additional 20,000 troops to quell the violence that defines Iraq is as dead wrong as his pronouncements that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, as dead wrong as his link between Iraq and 9/11, as dead wrong as his words that our troops would be perceived as liberators, and as dead wrong as sending our servicemen and women into war with inadequate body armor. It is as dead wrong as the decision to invade Iraq.
That the president wants to thrust an additional 20,000 troops into Baghdad battle is as dead wrong as his landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln under a “Mission Accomplished” banner and announcing an end to major combat just a couple of months after the invasion of Iraq.
In other words, George Bush has been so dead wrong about so much that his credibility to make new or any war strategy at all should not just be questioned, it should be denounced.
Bush’s plan to send 20,000 more of our young into the abyss of war is as dead wrong as the more than 3,000 American troops who have been killed and it is as dead wrong as the more than 650,000 Iraqis who have perished. It is also as dead wrong as the many disfigured “Coalition” forces, the maimed and displaced Iraqis, and the families who have sacrificed for the lies of George Bush, a sacrifice of such eviscerating pain and one that the president is incapable of imagining.
Why should any of us consider even for a second that George Bush has anything to offer the world except more disaster? Why should the adjective “new” receive an iota of attention or consideration? Let one of the president’s many verbal gaffes remind you. “Fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me-you can’t get fooled again.”
Many of us weren’t fooled by Bush. We knew from the beginning that he was dead wrong. Those of you who did believe him should take his latest proposal with a huge serving of caution. George Bush is a man of ideas. Tragically, they are all dead wrong.
Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She’s written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she’s a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,’05, she has been writing political articles. She can be reached at: Missybeat@aol.com