Post #97

Subject: Lessons Learned?

If I was a moderator at one of those seemingly weekly Presidential debates – or if I had access to the technology to make a YouTube vid, I’d ask one question: Good or bad – what lessons have you learned from the Iraq War? Presumably, these lessons will be applied during a future [candidate’s name] administration.

To me, all lessons flow from the idea of… A Declaration of War. Consider, we are undefeated in declared wars – it is the undeclared wars which gives us trouble. There’s a lesson there.

Commit the country BEFORE you commit the troops. And as George W. Bush has shown, make that “Commit the country honestly BEFORE you commit the troops.” Certainly, a Declaration of War would be a higher standard, and maybe Americans would not have been manipulated by fear.

The Powell doctrine – as followed successfully in ’91 – overwhelming force with a limited objective. At Bush’s press conference yesterday, he clearly reiterated his neo-con world view – that is, American troops will continued to be slaughtered in Iraq until ’09 for… WHATEVER! Certainly, a Declaration of War would be a higher standard, and maybe Americans would not have supported this stupidity.

From my Post #45, Senator Gordon Smith said, “And I felt duty bound to say what was on my heart, and to describe how this war had mutated from one thing to another, from taking out a tyrant and a terrorist and ridding him of weapons of mass destruction and establishing democracy, to now being street cops in a sectarian civil war. That's not what I voted for. That is not what the American people are for.”

When I started this blog a little over a year ago, I felt the Iraq War was winding down – truly. Our Army was nearing the breaking point, and the Republican party could not stand “stay the course.” I wanted to take a few parting swipes as Bush and his lazy, shallow neo-con world view were swept into the dustbin of history.

Now, our Army is stretched so thin that I can only pray no trouble breaks out someplace. The Republicans took a beating – the American people have spoken. And Bush stands, steadfast and sure, blind and deaf.

May God help us all.