Where is Amercia Going?

I have to wonder where America is going, and I know I can’t be the only one. Let’s start with the war in Iraq for now. We’ve got a President, who before 9/11 was fodder for the late night talk show hosts and comedians. His election as President was controversial to say the least. After the tragedy caused by the terror-cowards, Bush suddenly became “Super Patriot”, and united as a country, off to war we went. Later, based on “expert” intelligence, Bush expanded the war to Iraq and launched America’s first “pre-emptive” invasion of a country. We did it against the advice of our long time allies. We did it in violation of international law. We didn’t care. We wanted revenge. It bears pointing out that hereto, we’ve always been the “attackee” rather than the “attacker”.

Our so-called “experts” repeatedly assured us that Saddam Hussein (that’s the “buddy” of Bush’s dad from Gulf War I) had weapons of mass destruction. Saddam, we were told, had stockpiles hidden in every mosque scattered across the country. He, somehow, helped financed, planned, or trained the terror-cowards who attacked us. From all the reports, you’d think every child carried a lunch box, copy of the Koran, and an AK 47 off to school every day. Of course, we sometimes tend to forget that for decades, Saddam was once our ally. We helped him into power. We helped arm him, and we helped train his military. We even supported Saddam in his war against Iran during the late 1970's (a war where he used chemical weapons---and we knew it but didn't say a thing). I guess that's something we're not supposed to talk about huh?

So, we invaded and won. Big surprise. However, with Saddam removed, we find ourselves facing a situation reminisce of Vietnam (for those of you, like me, old enough to remember that war). We now have a bunch of religious nuts running around blowing everyone and everything up in the name of God. Well, that’s never been done before huh? You would think that Humanity has seen enough wars, purges, inquisitions, genocides, and murders done in the name of God to be really tired of it by now. The real tragedy was that there were no mass weapons of destruction. There were no terrorist camps in Iraq. Saddam didn’t finance anybody. In fact, it turned out that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. He was militarily impotent thanks to the first Gulf War. Yes, he was cruel and a bully to be sure; however he stabilized the region by keeping their religious kooks in place, and with the likes of Iran and the Taliban lurking, who needed anymore zealots running around?

The invasion was called “mission accomplished” by Bush, yet many of those responsible for 9/11, like Ben Laden, are still running around. We’re told now that US troops may be in Iraq for at least the next ten years while we create and stablize a government that no one asked for. Sure doesn’t sound like anything was accomplished to me, except, perhaps, for what Ben Laden wanted all along, which was to drag us into an unwinnable quagmire; depleting us of manpower, weapons, putting a drain on our economy, and wearing down our will to fight. Then again, that’s exactly what Bin Laden and the Taliban did to the once vaulted Russian military, and Ben Laden should know. After all, we trained and armed him. Isn’t there a proverb or something about crows coming home to roost? Better pull out an umbrella. I think it’s going to get messy.