Bush fails again in Iraq; Democrats no better

By GERRY WARNER
Cranbrook Daily Towsman
Jan. 12, 2007
"Iraqis risk losing the support of the American people."
So spake President George Bush in a news conference Wednesday announcing as Commander in Chief he was sending 21,000 more troops in the black hole known as Iraq. "Support." Is there some kind of cruel joke going on here? Do you think for a minute that -- God forbid -- you were suddenly transported to downtown Baghdad and struck up a conversation with an Iraqi that he or she would be gushing about all the wonderful "support" they've received from the American people?
If you were unfortunate enough to have such a conversation and the Iraqi you were talking to took you for an American, you'd be lucky to survive the experience given the Dante's inferno Bush and company have inflicted on the war-torn country the past four years. Here's but a few examples I've heard about in recent weeks.
"Lancet," the British medical journal and arguably the most respected medical journal in the world, recently announced the results of a study it made on civilian casualties in Iraq since the Americans invaded. Six-hundred and sixty thousand, that's right, 660,000 dead civilians. Even on his worst days, Saddam Hussein, the "Butcher of Baghdad" would have had a hard time keeping up with that. That's a lot of dead people to "democratize"a country, but we all know when the word "democracy" falls from Bush and Cheney's lips they really mean oil. It was ever thus.
The other incident in the news goes a long way to explain the above and in some ways is even more sickening. On the CBC Radio show "Dispatches" last week, an incident was related about one of the many hundreds of American contractors in Iraq who was getting ready to return home when a thought occurred to him. While working in Iraq and making his millions courtesy of the American taxpayer, he'd never taken a shot at an Iraqi. Everyone who ventures outside the Green Zone packs heat for their own protection and this particular contractor hadn't had an opportunity to use his weapon yet. So on the way to the airport, he started to take pot shots at Iraqi civilians on the street and eventually killed a taxi driver. His ghastly act even horrified American military officials, but when they went to arrest him they quickly found out they couldn't lay a finger on him because military law applies only to members of the military which this man was manifestly not. Nor is there any Iraqi criminal law to deal with such situtions. So for the time being at least, the murderer is free while officials scramble to come up with some sort of legal sanction for such barbarous behaviour.
Kind of makes you wonder who the "barbarians" really are.
Dispatches also related another incident when a 12-year-old Iraqi boy approached a gate of the Green Zone and one of the military personnel got nervous and shot him, thinking he might be a suicide bomber. Turns out the boy, an orphan who lost his parents in the anarchy of Baghdad, was looking for work. War is hell, they say, but this is getting ridiculous.
How Bush can possibly think his so-called "surge" of troops in Iraq can do anything, but make the situation worse is beyond my ability to fathom. Didn't work in Vietnam. It's not working in Afghanistan and it won't work in a country now embroiled in a civil war as much as many Americans, and some Canadians, would like to deny it. Unofficially, Bush's own generals are supposed to have told him that either send 200,000 more troops or get the hell out of the country because anything short of that won't make a difference. And the use of the word "surge" is interesting. In these days of spinning the media, surge sounds powerful, like something is really happening instead of the tragic realty of Iraqi civilians dying every day and American soldiers dying almost every other day. (more than 3,000 and counting).
The words of former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli come to mind:"When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging."I don't know if Bush reads history. He says he reads the Bible which has alot of warfare in it too. Perhaps he should read the Bible more closely. But in all honesty, it's not just Bush.
The newly victorious and emboldened Democrats haven't exactly distinguished themselves on the Iraq file either with the exception of Howard Dean, the only high- profile Democrat to come out clearly against the war, but couldn't carry the party with him. Hillary Clinton, the unannounced, supposed front-runner, has yet to enunciate a clear position on Iraq and neither has Bar ack Obama, her supposed main rival who has done nothing beyond complaining Americans are "baby-sitting a civil war."
It's fish or cut bait time as far as Iraq is concerned. If the Democrats want to avoid having Bush dump Iraq into their lap in the next election, they should cut funding for the war now.
Otherwise they'll take the blame for Iraq in 2008 and they will deserve it.
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