If a person is receiving strong chemotherapy for an agressive cancer, and while they are receiving the strongest drugs available, the cancer becomes more vicious and invasive, do you believe the medicine is working? Do you consider it a successful treatment? Hope is reduced to a prayer, and in the face of bitter reality, inevitable death arrives to meet the faith that lies within the terminally ill person's prayer.
How is this any different? I guess it depends on how you view the chances that a civil war in Iraq, which has surely broken out and has been fueled by hatred for our occupation, will destroy the chances for a united, inclusive Iraq with a successful and healthy democracy. Inevitable death of the dream of democracy for Iraq may be a reality if our medicine cannot provide the cure.
Is the "illness" terminal? How will Sunni minds be changed while we destroy their infrastructure and tear their families apart with killing? Have we sabotaged our troops with the wrong policy? Have we gone about this in a way that will destroy our own (and Iraq's) chance for success? Are we hurting the Iraqi people more than we're helping?
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated recently that the insurgency could last for many more years - three to nine years. If there's one thing history can tell us, it's that the American public will not stand for a prolonged loss of troops and treasure over this.
I do not see that we are winning the minds of the Sunnis with our brand of 'medicine', and the war we are making upon their homes and persons is likened to the chemotherapy holding off the vicious inevitable.
How do we get out? How do we explain to the mothers and fathers / husbands and wives of soldiers who've sacrificed their lives that the war must have an endgame and that their sacrifice meant something of value? I really want to know.
I want our country to succeed while acting as a respectable and benevolent supporter of human rights and freedom. I have no trust left for the Bush team who planned this war. They have breached my trust by misleading us citizens (and our Representatives) all the way from the lead-up to the Iraq war to the present day.
What is the endgame?
Jude
