Withdrawal Pains

All this talk of withdrawal is making me a little nervous. Don't get me wrong, I want the war to be over as much as anyone, I am just worried about the way that we might exit. It's a good sign that many people are discussing bringing American troops home, it's a good thing that the Iraqis feel that they can handle the insurgency without us. I am just having a few reservations about the guys who brought us the war and screwed up the aftermath having the brains to exit in a way that will not bring about another disaster. According to Sy Hersh, George Bush is lost in Jesusland, in denial about the reality in Baghdad, and leaving the running of the country to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

Do you blame me for being nervous?

Don't forget that the guys who started this thing are still in charge. Rumsfeld and Cheney have come up with the bright idea of replacing American troops with air cover, and letting the Iraqis on the ground pick the targets. Now, I'm not a military person, but fighting an urban war with five hundred pound bombs seems like over kill. For example, if you had a bunch of those wormy grubs in your garden, and they were eating your hostas, you wouldn't use a sledgehammer to kill them, because you might miss and completely destroy the hosta. You wouldn't spray pesticides, because the pesticides might kill all of the bugs that are good for the garden, and it might poison the neighbor's dog. (that might keep it from yapping all freakin night, but the neighbor wouldn't be very happy). Air strikes used against an unseen enemy is not really effective. And if your enemy lives in a heavily populated urban area, there are other problems.

Civilians.

What really irritates me about all of this immediate withdrawal talk is that no one is talking about the deaths of Iraqis. Come to think of it, no one has spoken about Iraqi casualties at any time during this F-ed up war. Even though we don't count them, do Americans think that they don't exist? One year ago, the Marines were bragging about having dropped 500,000 tons of ordinance (a nice word for bombs) on Iraq. Do Americans think that dropping bombs on heavily populated cities is something we should brag about? If one bomb weighs five hundred pounds, and it lands on a city block, do you think it knows the difference between insurgents and regular city dwellers?

But Americans scream for the withdrawal of our forces not caring anymore about what will happen to those regular people than they cared about the illegal war. It doesn't matter to them that we have completely destroyed a country. We care about our children, not theirs.

So let's bring our troops home. And when the bloodbath truly begins, we'll look the other way. We'll forget about the shame of torture and cluster bombs. We'll let the Pentagon continue to plan other wars without so much as an independent investigation into criminal behavior. We will be surprised when we realize that the world hates us and we will say something like, "They hate us because we are free." Our children will be safe at home, and the people who led us into this horrible sin will retire to the Hamptons, or somewhere warm and sunny. And when the truth does finally come all the way out about the body count, we will say, "Well, the world is a safer place without Saddam."

I hope y'all can live with that.

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