I note that the President has received "high marks" for his candor in his speech last night. High marks for what, one may ask?
What the President and anyone else who advocates "staying the course" in Iraq doesn't understand is that the whole approach to "the war on terror" is misguided and wrong. We need to go back to square one, Sept. 12, 2001, and start over (too bad we can't go back even further!) Low and behold, Susan Sontag and Rep. Lee were right. The whole metaphor of a war on "terror" is just plain stupid. How can you fight something you can't even define? If we try to define terror we'll soon see we must include our own behavior in the definition. It's like the war on "drugs" or a war on "evil"--fruitless, pointless pap.
We need to know who we face and who we are. If we are a democracy, then that has to be kept foremost in our minds. If we face a religious fanatacism from the 14th century, then we need to keep that prominent in our planning. A better metphor for this struggle should be the "good neighbor" policy. A democracy should be a good neighbor; that does not mean that said democracy must denude itself of all means for self-defense nor cower, fear ridden, in the face of a challenge. FDR and the "greatest generation" did not do that. They took the steps necessary to do the job.
What steps should we take? How about a priority for homeland security? The 9/11 Commission members keep warning us that we are yet woefully unprotected. Start with better security at our nation's harbors and maybe checking airline luggage more carefully. Also protect our borders (not with private militia patrols). Let us make the hunt for Osama and his ilk an international priority. Remember when even the French said "we are all Americans now"? Would it not be better to have the Chinese, Indians, Russians and the EU helping us find the sob? And maybe, just maybe, helping bring some form of stability to the Palsestinian mess? We might be surprised, if by now, we had relied on the poor old UN and good diplomacy in our hunt for the fanatics who carried out the attacks on 9/11.
Of course our response might look more like police work, heaven forbid, but so what? It might be that in fighting 4th generation wars we have to invent a new term for what we are doing. The abosolute WORST reaction to the events on that terrible September day was to center our response on revenge and anger. Just what OBL wanted. As our leader said, "We are going to kick some ass." Wrong response. We needed not a testerone driven cowboy, but a leader. Unfortunalely we have the former and not the latter.
What to do? Start by realizing our mistakes and getting rid of the bunch that have led us down a blind path! If this means impeachment, so be it. Let's elect some people next fall who will do the job. If the Democrats, and I see damned few of them stepping forward, cannot do the work then let us get some independents who will. Bernie Sanders comes to mind, and how bout Senator Byrd?
This is not a conservative-liberal fight. Just look at Antiwar.com to note how many libertarian "conservatives" would join in the effort. No this is a struggle between the forces of fascism (both foreign and domestic) and democracy. Let us act like the latter and not the former. Let us be a good neighbor and admit we don't have all the answers or solutions. Above all, let us let go of any imperial ambitions and work on the problems we have here at home. Lord knows there are enough of them! Peace.