I am a U.S. citizen, a Democrat, with very liberal progressive leanings yet was also given some conservative gene's that allow me to understand some of my fellow American's on the right and they're passionate feelings which include a strong military presence.
I am also a proud parent of two U.S. Army soldiers. My two have served our country gallantly and unselfishly. As it should be. I ,as did many of you, watched as the United States Armed Forces simply mowed down and bowled over their Iraqi counterparts at the beginning of this war that was started over lies and more lies spoken over and over again from Bush/Cheney/Rice/Powell and Rumsfield.
I don't know about you but I did feel a sense of great security and pride watching the U.S. military simply overwhelm their foes in Iraq with such ease. That meant to me that the military which had prepared itself all through the Clinton administration wasn't as inept as the GOP wanted us all to believe. What the neo-cons wanted was a way to put their hands on more of the military spending which is what Rumsfeld and the neo-cons led by Dick Cheney have now done. Billions of our country's current debt is due to military spending and cushy no-bid contracts handed to Dick Cheney's old company (which still sends him a yearly paycheck for thanks) Haliburton (Brown & Root). It doesn't stop there either...there are plenty of new security companies like Blackwater that are simply money pits with ex-soldiers getting paid $140K a year for doing what my son and daughter are currently doing for $30K a year. But I digress. Back to the real point of this diary.
A strong military is not a bad thing ya know. As I mentioned above, it was pretty cool to know we could stand up against the worlds Army's and defeat a threat anywhere if needed. But once our Army does that defeating then it's time to bring them home, brush them off, clean them up, reward their bravery and sacrifice, fix and repair all their tools small and large and continue to train them to fight even smarter without the need to kill even more and more citizens of this world. When we make them stay in the place of that battle. Where they had shown bravery and won. Sooner or later the great and wonderful effort that defeated an Army is pissed completely away.
You can win a battle fast and lose a war over time and that's just what it looks like George W Bush has done with the greatest military on the face of this planet. He took them to war, they won the battle they were trained to fight and then he left them there to smell the death and watch the entire nation of Iraq rot away. As a nation rots away and is being watched over by it's defeaters it strikes back every which way it can. Sooner or later the military that was left behind gets its ass kicked. These lessons have been learned by smarter people than I. We American's are watching just that happening. There is no
Winning in Iraq anymore....there is only more and more killing of brave, strong and committed American Soldiers. Shame on us all for making them be targets as we are doing.
And the neo-cons simply want a war that will last forever so they have bundles of money coming in to the war machine they built. Thats why the Republicans cannot allow our government to go Democrat. The daddy war bucks won't allow it. But fuck them.........
It's time to bring our brave soldiers home...brush them off....clean them up....reward them and thank them and fix all they're tools because there are some pretty big threats just over the horizon that it would be great if we were ready,waiting and prepared to handle.
Don't you think?