|
So yesterday the Senate passed a resolution which has been read by the Major Media as a "no confidence vote" against Bush's handling of the Iraq war. We've heard many on the left complaining that fundamentally we must bring our troops home for two reasons: either the presence of our troops in Iraq is dangerous or rediculously expensive--way too expensive for the payback that we're getting. The rational, as far as I can tell, is that we won the war, now it's time to force the Iraqi people to start standing on their own two feet rather than continue to occupy their country at great expense and great risk. The hypocracy of this position is absolutely stunning. Let me remind people of some history. When we won the war in World War II, we left troops in Germany to help keep the peace and protect Germany during her reconstruction from a brutal dictatorship which instrumented the mass murder of 11 million people in a huge holocaust (of which 6 million were Jewish), into the modern western democracy that she is today. The presence of those troops were also debated heavily--and interestingly enough, also opposed by the New York Times--but ultimately those troops and the Marshall reconstruction plan helped Germany become a peaceful country. The hypocracy comes in when your realize that today, 60 years later, our World War II-era invasion force still occupies Germany. We have 60,000 troops in Germany--approximately half the size of the troop force now in Iraq. We also have around 60,000 troops in South Korea, an occupation force from around 40 years ago during the Korean war. Now if we were so damned concerned about unwanted troops occupying a country at great cost for no good reason, they'd be looking around the world at other locations in the world as well--and any bill demanding we bring our troops back home would look at Germany and South Korea as well. After all, while the need to leave our troops in Iraq can be argued, it's harder to make the argument that we need to leave our troops in Germany and South Korea to preserve the stability of those countries--especially when one (Germany) has no hostile neighbors, and the other (South Korea) has it's own standing army and sufficient wealth to raise further troops to protect it's own border. If our concern, however, was putting our troops in harms way--well, that's what they're trained to do! And given that we have an enemy who is now blowing up random civilians in Britain, Spain, and Jordan (just to name a few), does it make sense that we should put warriors who are trained to be in harms way and take out the enemy in the path of the terrorists? Or should we remove the barrier and allow the terrorists to target our civilians directly--and kill a few thousand in one blow as they did on 9/11? The hypocracy of the left and the handful of republican senators bowing down to the pressure of the major media is stunning. Their interest is not saving money; that could be done with less risk by withdrawing our troops from being parked in a Germany and South Korea that don't want them there anymore. Their interest is not saving lives; the terrorists are just as happy targeting terrorists as they are targeting troopers--and troops are trained to deal with the fight. Civilians aren't. No; their interest is in bad-mouthing the current sitting President in order to play to a narrow constituency who has indeed been lied to--by Democrats hoping people don't know how to use a Google search to find what they just said a few years ago. posted by William Woody at 9:53 AM  
|
|
About:
A moderate conservative living in the left coast, surrounded by the sureal, wonders if there is a sane life living amongst those who have lost touch with reality. • View ProfileRecent Items: • five questions • remember, kiddies, iraq had no wmds • in media war, kurdistan strikes back • framing a belief system (part 3): the death of mul... • politics is a full body contact sport • about friggin' time • framing a belief system (part 2) • cats beware! • framing a belief system • annoyed with sbc dsl 
|