A little earlier today I got in to the office. The first thing I usually do is check my email, look what the weather is doing, and check CNN.com to see what the big news of the day is. When I got to CNN's homepage the top headline is "Bush Lays Out Strategy for Iraq." That got me thinking, why now? Here we are, nearly three years into the war in Iraq with American soldiers dying nearly every day. And Bush first decides to let the country know what his strategy is to win the war in Iraq?! Seriously, shouldn't he have thought about this more, say, when we first invaded Iraq?
I think that's one of the main reasons I do not support the war in and of itself. Bush decided to start it by saying that Saddam is bad (I'm paraphrasing a little bit there) and needs to be overthrown. OK, that's all well and good. But, that seemed to be his only plan. Well, that and fighting the war on terror, which I thought was suppose to be in Afghanistan, you know, where Osama is.
Now, I didn't read what their plan was, because I don't have time to read a 38-page document while I'm at the office, but I still think it's coming way too late in the war. I see that Bush had to do something because support for the war is waning really quickly, but it still doesn't make sense that he'd wait this long to let America know what his plan of action is. That's all I'm saying on that subject, because it just pisses me off.
And as a sidenote, just because I say I'm against the war doesn't mean I think we should pull our troops out. I'm saying that we shouldn't have gone there in the first place without some solid plan as to when we could declare victory. While the troops are still there, I'm going to support them, because that is what we should do as Americans.
Anyway, that's enough from me for now. I probably should do some work while I'm here today.
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2 comments:
I know I'm one of the few, perhaps, but I am glad that Bush took some sort of action against terrorism. It was awful what happened 9/11, and if we didn't make a formidible stance, the USA as we know it would crumble.
Terrorists bombed the World Trade Center once and nothing was done about it. So why not shoot for a bigger target? Hence 9/11.
That's not to say that things couldn't be improved. They surely can. But I'm glad Kerry wasn't able to simply shut everything down as he repeatedly said he wanted to do. Yes, it would be great to pull out of Iraq. I think it is time. Then we can focus more on issues here. But we need to pull away strategically and not just let the place fall entirely.
I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 and was disappointed in Moore's point of view. He made some valid points, but a true journalistic touch would have been to show both sides. After all, the entire scene of the middle east was portrayed as kids playing ball in the street. Yet the world over knows of terrorist sects, etc.
Anyway, I don't always need to know why the higher-ups are planning something, so long as have best interests at heart. And though some of those interests were indeed personal interests (pursuing Hussein, for instance), we are better off with people like him put away. Heck, back in 1990 I did a whole science fair project on beta, beta-prime diethyl dichloro sulfide, the chemical name of mustard gas, notably used by Hussein even then.
Anyway, I don't usually express my political opinions, because it usually just leads to a lot of fingerpointing and bad feelings. Bush is not perfect and he needs to clean things up. But I am glad he took action when he did.
Steve, you have a valid point. I also agree that I'm glad that Bush did something about terrorism, which is surprising considering how much I'm against just about everything he does.
However, my gripe is that he was going after Osama very well for a while, and then he switched gears and went after Saddam. While I agree that the world is probably a better place with Saddam out of the picture, I think Bush was a little trigger happy going to Iraq right away. Maybe he was trying to prove he could do what daddy couldn't. I'm not sure. All I know is that he should have had a clearer plan in mind when we invaded than what he seemed to. And he should have let the public know about whatever plan he had.
And I also would love it if we could pull our troops out now, but we have to finish the job we've started, whatever that means.
So, those are just my opinions of what I think about the whole war thing.
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