NATIONAL DIALOGUE NEEDED

In 2005, Nancy Pelosi called on President Bush to produce a report detailing his strategy for success in Iraq, then offered a stinging indictment of the war: “This war in Iraq is a grotesque mistake; it is not making America safer, and the American people know it” Majority Leader DeLay, Majority Whip Blunt, and Speaker Hastert all condemned Pelosi. DeLay demanded an apology for reckless comments, Blunt charged she “emboldened” the enemy, and Hastert played the “support our troops” card, saying “I think that our military is the finest military on the face of the earth” (Huffington/Right Is Wrong/2008/165-168).

Reading that, what I want to know is, “what does our “finest fighting machine” have to do with the fact of Bush-Cheney dragging us into an unnecessary war by using false and manipulated evidence?” What is the relationship between our “finest military” with the fact that President Bush used the Iraq War in recording a record national debt?

What has the quality of our troops to do with the fact that the Right (and the war) was wrong, in that the war did not have to be fought, more than 4,000 American dead need not have died and more than 150,000 Iraqi civilians need not have died. The Right (and the war) was wrong because Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not a state sponsor of international terrorism (We punished Suddam Hussein for such behavior, but the Bush Cabinet remains free today and we make an ogre out of Barak Obama).

The Right was wrong because democracy did not spread in the Middle East, nor did Iraq ever greet us as the Liberators Cheney pictured. The Military was a Right Wing pawn in a war that was neither cheap nor easy, which President Bush photo-opted as “Mission Completed” but which we are still fighting and for which we are still paying--dearly (at home and abroad).

George Bush imperialized the presidency, which our founders established as a three-way sharing of powers between Congress, the Courts, and the Office of President. As it stands today, the American people never had a vote in Desert Storm-1990 or in the Iraq War under Bush-43, but we pay for it today with a constitution slowly being eroded by the Political Right.

Now that the 2010 Election is history, the Pelosi Problem has been relegated to a back burner and we face Boehner's Boner. The Political Right wants to reject Health Care for America and maintain military operations that consume 57% of our national expenditures. I am not at all surprised when I learn that suicide in the military is the 3rd leading cause of death or that suicide kills more soldiers than enemy fire kills in Afghanistan.

I have enough problems with issues of war(s) as a civilian; I’m not sure how I would handle it if I were in the military and saw how my patriotism had been abused, and then I had to come back to the kind of country the war is creating.

There are better and more honest ways to deal with these issues, and we have not yet begun to have the dialogue we need regarding them, especially when the public wakes up to the ways it has been duped and its freedoms lost. Fact is, I doubt we will ever be allowed to dialogue these issues!

AND, we have not yet begun to deal with the problems of Islam we have allowed into our midst. They are proving beyond doubt that Islam disapproves of President Bush’s “cherished democracy,” as they staunchly resist democritization of Iraq - Iran - Saudi Arabia et al.

America needs further conversation … Warner’s World … walkingwithwarner.blogspot