It has been mentioned in recent articles and multiple comments by John McCain that due to recent events in Iraq that the 2008 troop Surge has worked and that history may show that Bush and company were right after all to invade Iraq in order to establish a U.S.-friendly democracy in the Middle East. These efforts at revisionist history sadly force me to speak up to remind all of us of a few facts that apparently some are trying to have quickly forgotten or to remember differently. The Surge was supposed to help create the breathing space for political unity to occur in Iraq. This has failed to happen and the peace that has been achieved has been bought with millions of U.S tax dollars which, while preferable to the death and dismemberment of our troops, is clearly not a permanent solution in the words of our own military commanders on the ground. By the administration's own definition of the goals of the Surge, it has not worked, regardless of how much John McCain and George Bush wish it had.
Our reputation, for those too young or information-challenged to know, as a country for the first part of the 20th Century up to the Vietnam war was that we were the good guys - that we followed the rule of law and could be counted on to treat people generally with respect owed to all people regardless of race, creed, color or religion. This was the promise of America immortalized in our Constitution and this ideal made us a beacon of the free world. The legacy of the George W. Bush administration is clearly the destruction of this ideal in the minds of friends and foes alike. The documented actions directed by President Bush and his staff qualifying as torture clearly in violation of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention conducted in our name by our military and CIA operations in Afghanistan, at Abu Gharaib, at Guantanamo Bay and via extraordinary rendition have created at least 100,000 estimated new potential terrorists. By conservative estimates, few [5 to 7%] of the detainees that were subjected to torture or killed were actually 'bad people'. Most of the rest were detained without proof of crimes since we put out a bounty with cash rewards and many were presented for processing under false pretenses by their enemies. Since the Bush administration suspended due process of law for these prisoners and allowed them to be mistreated, flying in the face of international law and our own Uniform Code of Military Justice, they and all their relatives have been handed a moral right to avenge themselves on the United States of America. It is profoundly ironic and disturbing to me that Senator John McCain, once pointedly objecting to and exposing the torture of prisoners in American custody during congressional hearings, in the final analysis ended up supporting President Bush's demands for legalization of this conduct and in effect legislating retroactive amnesty for himself and his staff for what amounts to war crimes.
In a recent broadcast on MSNBC [Rachel Maddow, September 2008], it was disclosed that in discussions with the Iraqi government, the Iraqis proposed a timeline for withdrawal of our troops in their country by December 2010. Our official response, told to them in Arabic, according to our own foreign service translators obtained by our newspeople, was that the Bush administration asked for an additional 12 months delay - to December 2011 due to 'domestic politics'. In other words, our troops are to stay in Iraq for an additional year to serve the political needs of the U.S. administration. If you or any of your relatives are serving in our military right now, I formally apologize for this poor excuse for a commander in chief. His ‘support the troops’ cover is officially blown.
There are many more reasons why this president will not be remembered well in history, but I felt obligated as a Navy veteran and just an American citizen to bear witness to these few facts lest we forget and perpetuate these errors through popular amnesia. No amount of revisionist history efforts can erase the memory of the people who have been tortured by our government. It is time to face the facts and try to make amends as best we can. Unfortunately, while we are spending millions perpetually to keep militias from attacking us in Iraq, and despite financial market chaos, we should also prepare to eventually be asked [and ought] to spend millions more in reparations to those 100,000 wrongly accused, tortured or killed, or to their survivors. Thank you very much George W. Bush and your friends. Please recall these events when you make your choices in the November election. Let's all vote to try to return to being a country proud of its original intentions - a land of the people who revere the rule of law, truth and justice for all. Obama for America.