Riding the bus to oblivion

"The public's more negative view of the situation in Iraq is reflected in the growing numbers of Americans who believe the U.S. is losing ground, rather than making progress, on such key objectives as preventing a civil war and defeating the insurgents... Two-thirds say the U.S. is losing ground in preventing a civil war in Iraq, up from 48% in January. About half (51%) believe the U.S. is losing ground in defeating the insurgents militarily, compared with 38% two months ago..." Pew Research Center Poll (March 16, 2006)

"Most Americans don't expect the war to end any time soon. Most think the U.S. will remain in Iraq for at least two more years, and 27 percent say the war will last another five or more years." CBS News Poll (March 14, 2006)

Two recent polls - one by the Pew Research Center and another by CBS News show that the American people understand that the war in Iraq was a mistake from the start, that they no longer believe the President is honest or competent, that civil war in Iraq is either already underway or all but inevitable, and that we are not heading for a successful ending to the war (whatever that might be).

They are not ready yet to pull out, but worry that we might just stay too long.

Isn't that amazing? What the hell is the point in staying another day?

The movement in American attitudes towards the war is a terribly slow awakening -- a creeping process of enlightenment. While our Troops and the Iraqi people have been living the hell of this war, the American people have been slow, criminally slow, to see the reality that Bush has masked with dishonesty, secrecy, fear-mongering and cynical resorts to phony patriotism.

Thousands of lives have been lost or shattered while distracted and uninformed Americans allowed George W Bush to fulfill his dream of toppling Saddam.

Some of us feared the nuclear weapons Saddam might give to his alleged ally, Osama bin Laden. Now we know Saddam had no such weapons, and we also know that the greatest threat to his regime was from Islamists like Osama bin Laden. Today, as Iraq falls into the hands of Shiite Islamists, with a future theocracy not unlike Iran's (or that of the previous Taliban regime in Afghanistan), we can see why George HW Bush did not press the Gulf War all the way to Bagdhad. Now we know that Iran was always a greater threat than Iraq, and that the Iranian threat is greater than ever thanks to our invasion of Iraq.

Whatever our delusions in 2002 and in early 2003, by 2004 it was clear that we had made a mistake. People were dying because of that mistake. But we stayed anyway. Into 2005. Into 2006. We stayed on, and the killing continued. With no plan and no purpose, we stay on and casually accept the cost in cash, blood and security. We let Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney and Rice and their idiot yes-man generals carry on with their aimless and incompetent occupation of Iraq.

America today is like a bus with an intoxicated driver.

Imagine that you boarded a bus only to realize after five minutes that the driver is intoxicated. The other passengers were slow to recognize the problem, but now a majority of the passengers are painfully aware that the bus is not in safe hands.

Getting off this bus is not an option, so how long will we let this man continue to drive?

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