Is Iraq Really That Important?
This morning as I was enjoying one of the many cups of coffee that accompany my daybreak ritual of newspaper and TV news, I was half paying attention to CSpan’s Washington Journal when a call from a California viewer caught my interest. In the span of two minutes, the caller succinctly and clearly communicated my feelings on the state of affairs in Iraq. To parapahrase, this is what he said:
“If the war in Iraq is truly the frontline in the battle against global terrorism, why are we not exhausting every possible resource to obliterate the enemy? If this is it (as the President has claimed for so long), if this is the ultimate confrontation of good versus evil - the war to protect our American way of life; we should spare no expense, draft every able bodied person and sacrifice every budget cut all in the name of preserving our society.
Why are we even debating a troop surge? Forget about a surge, if this THE war why are we quibbling about 20 or 30,000 troops? We should be mobilizing everything we’ve got to win this war. Forget about exit strategies, if this is the frontline for our future, we must win this war regardless of the costs.
If President Bush is so certain that the conflict in Iraq is the point from which all other terrorism flows, I am more than prepared to go and fight. Forget about public opinion, we the people of this country elected the President to make just these kinds of decisions - even when they’re unpopular, and frankly if he feels it’s necessary to do this we should, but…
I don’t think he does. If the President was so certain about this, he wouldn’t be wasting time talking about troop withdrawals and engaging the Iraq study group to help him build some political cover. If the President really believed his own rhetoric, we wouldn’t be going about this half-rear-ended.”
I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
