SO WHAT HAVE WE GAINED?

I'm swamped enough with work and disgusted enough by what I'm seeing in the MS press and many liberal blogs to keep on, as I've been doing the past week, speaking out without taking the time to research and cite all my references. So for what it's worth, here's my plaint, and it's why I started this blog (to vent my frustration) so I won't apologize any further.

I DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR OPPOSING THE WARS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ. Yes, I was appalled as was every American on 9/11. I wanted justice. I STILL want justice. And I want increased safety for my children and my fellow U.S. citizens. I didn't see how either invasion would bring that about. I believe that when a criminal commits a crime, you go after him, not his neighbors or his relatives or his co-religionists.

We didn't do that in either case, go after the actual criminals. Yes, the Taliban was "protecting" Al Qaeda at the time. But our intelligence had informed us not once but several times in the time immediately preceding 9/11 that the Taliban was disenchanted with Bin Laden and sought a rapprochement, seemingly willing to betray and/or turn him over to international authorities. We didn't respond. (Bush never responds unless it's to a direct attack.) It was also obvious to me that Bush had his eye on Iraq from the beginning and that Afghanistan was a mere sop to the sensibilities (and public relations potential) of expert American diplomats. More than a year later, what have we reaped? A rebounding Taliban, a renewed (once ended by the Taliban) opium trade (up 300% since the invasion), and a devastated country in need of billions of dollars of reconstruction.

Whatever. I won't even try to recap the Iraq debacle and its obvious failures to accomplish a single one of our avowed objectives.

It's ironic that my career-military officer-dad warned me, as a teenager struggling with the questions raised by the Vietnam War, against trusting any civilian authority over my own intelligence and common sense. You'd think he'd have instilled me with a belief that the American military is always forthright and trustworthy, wouldn't you? Instead, my revered dad taught me that the military is merely an arm of civilian policy, and is only as good as that policy. That doesn't mean that he didn't love, honor and feel responsible for the soldiers under his command. On the contrary. He was plain-out telling me that no matter how heroic and praiseworthy are the efforts of our troops, it is their commanders that are truly responsible for their actions, and that the chain of command bears the ultimate responsibility.

So, having digressed as usual (it's a journal after all, isn't it?), I return to my original thesis: Bush's "War on Terror" is a disaster; not one action along his way has demonstrably made the United States safer, more respected, more hopeful.