The Tipping Point, part 2
We need to ask a few hard questions of our political and through them, our military leadership. I have no illusions that anyone with any authority or power in government is looking at a free blog written by a disaffected voter, but, I suppose anything is possible. I am going to list a few questions in no particular order.
a) What do we hope to accomplish with a 'victory' in Iraq? What will the government and social structure of the country look like?
b) What are the benefits to us, and to the world at large, of such a victory? What arethe consequences of not achieving that goal?
c) How can our military forces become more effective at both routing the insurgency and cultivating a positive impression in the eyes of the people in the war zone?
d) What are the dangers to the American people of continuing to prosecute this war?
e) What is the Congress and the President willing to do to win? How will our civil liberties be protected? If the American people must individually bear the cost of thisaction, what safeguards will be put in place, what steps taken to relieve these burdens when the need passes; how is that point defined?
Right now, this is not a Democrat vs Republican issue. There is much blame to lay at the feet of the current administration, but by no means all of it. The Bush administrationis simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. True, they are zealots with a far too simplistic view of things, and priorities that put the hoarding and preservation of wealth and advantage in the hands of the few ahead of all other things, but this situation has been coming for a long time, decades or even centuries. Blame them for ignoring it, or not recognizing it, underestimating it, or even for attempting to manipulate it for other ends, but they certainly did not create it.
The issue is who will best address this situation, and act to both remedy the inequities of the past, and to build a stable framework for the future. That is a nice neat little phrase, you might hear it or something close to it in one or more campaign speeches over the next few years, but actually putting such an initiative in place will be complicated and ugly. It will require leaders whose integrity is unimpugned, who have the trust and confidence of those that they represent.
We will have an opportunity in a few months to make our voices heard.
Please do.
Do NOT assume that the party in power will be ousted, they are more durable than you think. Do NOT assume that they are safe either, nobody knows until the votes are counted. Use your intuition and judgement, (you can't go by what is said and how it is said in a campaign). If you are happy with the way things are, support those who brought you here. If not, then get somebody else.
It really is up to you.
a) What do we hope to accomplish with a 'victory' in Iraq? What will the government and social structure of the country look like?
b) What are the benefits to us, and to the world at large, of such a victory? What arethe consequences of not achieving that goal?
c) How can our military forces become more effective at both routing the insurgency and cultivating a positive impression in the eyes of the people in the war zone?
d) What are the dangers to the American people of continuing to prosecute this war?
e) What is the Congress and the President willing to do to win? How will our civil liberties be protected? If the American people must individually bear the cost of thisaction, what safeguards will be put in place, what steps taken to relieve these burdens when the need passes; how is that point defined?
Right now, this is not a Democrat vs Republican issue. There is much blame to lay at the feet of the current administration, but by no means all of it. The Bush administrationis simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. True, they are zealots with a far too simplistic view of things, and priorities that put the hoarding and preservation of wealth and advantage in the hands of the few ahead of all other things, but this situation has been coming for a long time, decades or even centuries. Blame them for ignoring it, or not recognizing it, underestimating it, or even for attempting to manipulate it for other ends, but they certainly did not create it.
The issue is who will best address this situation, and act to both remedy the inequities of the past, and to build a stable framework for the future. That is a nice neat little phrase, you might hear it or something close to it in one or more campaign speeches over the next few years, but actually putting such an initiative in place will be complicated and ugly. It will require leaders whose integrity is unimpugned, who have the trust and confidence of those that they represent.
We will have an opportunity in a few months to make our voices heard.
Please do.
Do NOT assume that the party in power will be ousted, they are more durable than you think. Do NOT assume that they are safe either, nobody knows until the votes are counted. Use your intuition and judgement, (you can't go by what is said and how it is said in a campaign). If you are happy with the way things are, support those who brought you here. If not, then get somebody else.
It really is up to you.
posted by eccentric recluse at 5:06 AM
3 Comments:
The party in power HAS to be ousted! Things are far worse than people imagine. For quite some time now the drum beat FOR wwIII as been beating and Mr. Bush's address to the nation the other night did nothing to reassure me that reasoned thought is in play in the WOT.
Correct me if I'm wrong but did not Mr Bush say that we are in a war for civilization. The wars in the region are not being fought like they mean that but what conclusions can we reach with that type of retortic? Was he trying to enflame the people of the region and what purpose does that serve?
JB
JB, it serves no purpose, but I am coming to suspect a factor that may not be figured in to many opinions, and that is that the current administration and government is a bit lacking in communications skills---many times what they say and how it is said is done in a shotgun fashion without any consideration to how it will be taken in any but their own narrow context. Don't misinterpret this, that narrow context is still wrong as hell, but I wonder if they really know how badly they come off to the citizenry and to the world?
Other regimes with despotic ambitions throughout history have been able to use language to their advantage, I think that this wannabe is stumbling through the minefields of grammar.
just my $0.02
A bit lacking in communications skills is certainly an understatement! Something I saw just last night strikes me. Jon Stewart was interviewing a political consultant to Bush and Stewart didn't buy into the fact that Bush is an idiot or even that he lacks basic commuications skills owning to the fact that he is so good at campaigning for office. Stewart's point was that Bush and his administation just doesn't know how to govern. I think it's more sinister than that. They are on record as saying that they would like the fed small enough they could drown it in a bathtub.
How this relates to Iraq? History will show, unless this bunch manages to bury the records, that the Iraq occupation was in deep trouble from the start due to mismanagment on every level.
JB
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