Worst President Ever

After assuring us going in that Iraq was not and would not be anything like Vietnam, George W. Bush is about to argue that withdrawal from Iraq would cause the kind of violence and chaos that followed our withdrawal from Vietnam.

Vietnam is like the Civil War. Some people will never stop fighting it. Iraq will be the same way. You can pull the military forces out of the quagmire, but the arguments will live on and on and on.

If we could have moved the Civil War to someone else's real estate certain people would probably still be fighting it.

We've had the video of Dick Cheney in 1994 explaining how war in Iraq would be a quagmire. We had the assurances that George's Folly would be a quick and decisive event. We had howls of protest from the warmongers insisting that it would be nothing like Vietnam. But now that it suits their purposes to draw the comparison, it will be just like Vietnam.

This administration will say whatever is convenient to try to get what they want. From the beginning, George has looked like a spoiled, whiny teenager to me. This is just more of the same. He puts on a manly voice and tries to look like a rational adult, but it's all just to justify his impulse of the moment or shovel some sand over his pile of indiscretions.

Now we're seeing commercials to promote our continued military involvement. They lump Afghanistan and Iraq together as a package deal. A double-amputee veteran urges us to lobby our senators and congressional representatives to keep fighting as a way to keep terrorists from attacking us again. No individual politician dares to put his face up with a message like that. We have the assurances of someone who can't really know that we are winning on the ground and need to stay engaged. I honor the man's bravery, but I don't trust his information. Where's the definitive victory?

I can understand wanting to put an outpost in the region. Since such an outpost can't help but generate conflict, placing it there under the cover of a war is as good a way as any. War would find it eventually. But don't dangle the carrot of "victory" in front of what you hope is a gullible American public. As soon as we went into Iraq it was a long-term sentence. Meanwhile, what do we do when the terrorists inevitably figure out how to launch completely effective operations from placid-looking locales anywhere in the world? What do we do when another spot heats up while the ones we're in still burn and itch?

I can't believe anyone wants to be the next President of the United States. Sure, you can't help but look better than the present idiot and his pack of jackals, but you get stuck having to clean up after them. If you last eight years it probably won't be half enough.