Blah, Blah, Blah Politics

Yesterday our token liberal where I work asked what I thought about us entering the fourth year of the Iraq War. I honestly hadn't thought about it. It seems I go in streaks in caring about national news. Mostly because there is no truth to be found. Liberal media outlets stress one extreme. Right wing media outlets stress the other. And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, lying unreported to the masses.

So here's my thoughts on the Iraq war. Either we went in for bad reasons or for good ones. It either has helped in the War on Terror or it hasn't. We've either made a lot of progress or we haven't. We're winning or we're not. In the future we'll either consider it Bush's claim to fame or Bush's biggest failure.

If you could trust media to report the truth in Iraq, I still wouldn't take it to the bank. There's just too much to analyze and to consider for a 2 minute live report from a moving convoy. I figure the only people who really know if we're succeeding, if we're winning, if it's worth it, are the generals in Iraq and the Iraqi people. Maybe.

Here's the facts. We're still there and most Americans thought we wouldn't be. We pussyfooted the war in trying to appease Europe and the domestic critics and in so doing, we did nothing. There are still critics, maybe more than ever, and we didn't score the rousing victory we all thought should be possible.

We should learn a lesson from history (afterall, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.) In Vietnam we pussyfooted. We allowed hippies and foreign countries to dictate how we conducted that war. We lost that war. It's happening again, and while the horrors of failure endured in Vietnam in no way compare the relatively small loss of life in Iraq, the comparison lies in the way we've conducted the war. If you wage war, then you'd better wage war as if quick and decisive victory is the only option.

So in the States we get more partisan fighting. More liberals blaming Bush. More conservatives blaming liberals. More Howard Dean making himself look like an idiot. More Bush sounding like one. Unfortunately, we won't know if we've won this war for years down the line. Probably long after the war is over. Long after we've pulled the last soldier back home. Long after Bush is forgotten about. Then, we'll look at Iraq and see if it's peaceful or if it's rogue nation. Then we'll know, but not until.