Friday December 22, 2006 What is winning?

We can win!
All we need is another 100 billion dollars on top of the 80 billion this year and thousands of more troops with more in the future! That's the word coming down from the mountain.

They don't listen to the people, the voters.

This reminds me so much of Vietnam where we inserted ourselves into a civil war without a real plan. First it was just advisers. Then we had to support the government because they were too unstable to handle it by themselves. Our people said NO, but the politicians wouldn't listen. We had invested too much effort and lives and money just to walk away from it. Finally, the congress had to cut off the funds before the leaders and the military would let it go.

Now we are doing exactly the same thing. Back then, we were worried about the “Domino Theory” where if Vietnam fell to the communists, the rest of the region would follow. Now we are trying to “stabilize” the middle east by bringing democracy to Iraq, whether they want it or not. Our leaders and our military aren't listening to the people. The boys are over there doing their duty and following orders and getting mutilated and killed just like they did in Vietnam. Now we are friends with communist China and communist Vietnam and not worried about the “Domino Theory”. Now we are worried about the Islamic countries of the middle east. We don't understand them any better than we understood the Vietnamese or the Chinese.

George doesn't want his legacy to be just about the Iraqi war, but it's his war that he created, in spite of world opinion. It was for his “weapons of mass destruction” that we invaded another country without provocation. It's because he can't admit a mistake that we remain there in spite of his own people's opinion. He keeps talking about winning, but he has never defined how we will know when we have won. He keeps talking about bringing democracy to Iraq, when they want a theocracy.

It's part of their culture to have their religion deeply embedded in the government of their daily affairs. When we leave, there will be bloodshed until the majority of their people settle who will govern them. This religious debate (war) has been continuing for over a thousand years and we won't stop it. We are outsiders (unbelievers, infidels) who they don't trust and won't ever truly trust. They believe, rightly, that we have our own agenda in occupying their country and won't be happy until we leave.

Somehow, the world continued after we left Vietnam. We realized that we can't settle all the world's problems. We have trouble enough with handling our own crime, poverty, education, medical needs, disasters, etc without taking on the troubles of other countries. We don't have to be the policemen for the whole world. Why should we be?