The Mission Has Been Accomplished

[NativeTexan]

After listening to George W. Bush's "speech" the other night, it seems to me that the biggest problem is that the president keeps moving the goal posts further away from wherever the ball is placed. As Senator Dick Durbin talked about, our kids, our military have done one helluva job in Iraq, and under the worst possible conditions.

So many of them joined in the wake of 9/11 under the most patriotic of circumstances. To right a wrong. To punish those who dared attack American soil. Only to find themselves involved, under completely false pretenses, in Iraq fighting in a folly setforth by idealogues, who capitalized on America's fears and anger to try to set up a democracy in the Middle East.

And even though they were undermanned, overworked, underequiped, and completely out of place, they did their jobs to the best of their abilities.

They took down the evil government of Saddam Hussein. They killed his satanic sons. They captured Saddam and turned him over to the Iraqis. They allowed the Iraqis the opportunity to create a Constitution. They gave the Iraqis time to form local and national governments. They have trained their military and police. They have DIED to allow the freedoms that Iraq is now in a position to enjoy.

Their mission IS accomplished, and there is no "loss" or "cut and run" to bringing them home and doing so as heroes and victors!!

If the Iraqis can't make a go of their fledgling democracy it will be for one of two reason....or maybe both. They can't overcome 1300 years of sectarian warfare with 4 years of democratic rule, OR the lesson can now be taught, as every other president beside Bush has always known, that you can't force democracy, as you can say fascism or communism, into a society at the end of a gun.

Democracy is an idea. An idea that has to be wanted bad enough that the guns, if there need to be some, are picked up from within a border to fight for the freedom that it allows. John F. Kennedy warned in his speech to the American University in Washington not too long before his death, that we could not spread freedom throughout the world by some "pax-Americana" with American weapons of war, but that it could only be done by example and creating the wishes within imprisoned societies for the freedom that America enjoys.

Either way, this Bush intrusion into another society has been as failed an experiment as the world has ever known.

The time to declare victory and return our kids home is NOW!