Beyond Rhetoric to the Essence

But let’s talk “real� slippery and cowardly! You invade a nation, while telling the people of that nation you are doing it all for them, going so far as calling it Operation Iraqi Freedom. Three years later while bogged down in that country, having destroyed the infrastructure, directly or indirectly caused the deaths of perhaps 100,000-plus citizens; almost 3,000 of your own troops are dead with another 20,000 wounded (over 7,000 seriously), and having triggered a sectarian/civil war; what do you do? You turn around and in essence tell those same people, that you would rather fight “your� enemy in "their" nation, than in your own? In addition, you have changed your motivations for political reasons; namely the people at home are “finally� beginning to understand you started the war based on false premises and then proceeded to thoroughly mismanage it as well. THAT is how I would define slippery and cowardly, as well as disingenuous and dishonest.

Obviously one would rather not have to fight in one’s own nation and see the citizens put in harms way. That is always something to avoid at all costs, but why is it morally acceptable to create those circumstances in someone else’s nation? It just seems to me that fighting one’s own war in another nation, and allowing their people to be slaughtered might be a little less than laudable or courageous. Again, I don’t advocate fighting here instead, I’m simply saying this is a war that never should have been started; it was not the “last resort� the president claims. Hussein was well contained; there was no mushroom cloud looming in the distance. And there is no reason to believe that Al Qaeda is incapable of attacking the US again, simply because there are a number of that group fighting in Iraq. That the US has been exempt from attack since 9/11 doesn't mean it isn't vulnerable. It could just as well serve the purpose of others to use the invasion of Iraq to inflame the entire Middle East and world opinion first, so that if and when the next attack does come there will be little or no sympathy for the USA like the last time. It's also been great for terrorist recruiting purposes.

Sorry, I don’t buy into the “we got false intelligence� story. This administration had access to a lot of intelligence which contradicted the presence of WMDs, a nuclear program and any Iraq/Al Qaeda connection. Many intelligence agents from various government agencies have since concurred. They cherry picked the information with the intent of misinforming and misdirecting the American public in order to justify a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq the neoconservatives were salivating for since the mid 1990s.

I feel it's equally slippery attempting to condone torture by circumventing the original spirit of the Geneva Convention, thinking instead you can sign the agreement and years later alter the language or redefine terms you have agreed to when you believe it suits your own purposes. And when the former Secretary of State insinuates America has loss the moral high ground: " The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," it’s unbelievable to find the president fail to acknowledge this by going into his familiar “terrorists are bad� rhetoric as if this justifies anything we might do. -- "It's unacceptable to think there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective." Since when is it “unacceptable� for any of us to think whatever we like?

And of course, Powell never said US behavior is the same as Islamic extremists, he simply implied condoning torture is not morally justifiable. Formerly the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Powell understands the Geneva Convention exists to protect the soldiers in the field in each signatory nation; something George Bush, in spite of his vast military experience and truncated career in the National Guard doesn’t seem concerned about or understand. It's time to get beyond all the political rhetoric and to the essence of what is really important.