2 Years Or Else… Another New Direction

Nov

14th

Posted in Politics by Douglas Karr at 12:25 am

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Democrats Part of America’s blessing and curse is it’s ability to want and get everything now. The Iraq war is viewed by the media as the biggest failure ever – but in comparison to every other war, it’s had the lowest death rate within one of the shortest periods. It’s all simply a matter of perspective. America’s perspective is very, very shallow.

I wonder whether or not the Democratic leadership really ‘wanted’ to win this mid-term election. I know that Nancy Pelosi did – she’s already lining up her and her cronies for some work. But I wonder whether the ’sensible’ leadership of the Democratic party really wanted to win.

Behind Ms. Pelosi on the television today was a great big banner that read, “A New Direction”. It didn’t say where that direction was, or where we were actually going… just a new direction. That’s why I was disheartened with this election.

Now the Dems have to make every attempt within the next 2 years to clean up the mess. Interestingly, part of the mess will be the last two months where outgoing Republicans rape and pillage us for everything they can get their hands on going out the door. I really wish Bush would exercise his veto options in these last couple months, but I know he won’t. He has to help his cronies, too.

Given 2 years, can the Dems really step up and hit a homerun? Or even a base hit? My prediction is that we’re still in Iraq two years from now, still in a huge deficit, but the economy will still be going well because between impeachment hearings, Bush will have to veto a few tax increases going into the next election.

Where does that leave everything? At least with this election we had someone to blame… Republicans in the House, the Senate, and in the Presidency. Who will be blamed in the next election? I think it will be “2 years or else another new direction”. The next 2 years could do more damage to the next Democratic candidate than having the Republicans staying in power. I suppose this is the curse of the two party system.

I hope you folks don’t mind me talking about politics and family for a couple days. My work life is in a tizzy right now – I’m working some long hours that have caught up with me, and I’m not sure what my next step is… that makes speaking about work tough right now! I’ll get back on it tomorrow, though, I promise!

Dave Eckert

The bottomline on Iraq is we should never have gotten ourselves in the mess to begin with. Anyone who thought we'd go in and be out with any kind of success was fooling themselves. The place is a no win scenario. I agree, neither political party can successfully get us out of this mess. However, I am certainly willing to listen to new ideas on how we get out as painlessly as possible. The current plan has been disastrous.

We have de-stabilized an entire country and obviously cannot just pull out. On the otherhand, if we stay we continue losing more of our sons and daughters. No matter how long we stay, we lose. No matter how long we wait to leave, the enemy claims victory.

Comparing the death toll to previous wars is misleading. True, compared to the other wars we have thankfully lost less of our troops. But, this is not conventional warfare. We are not head to head with an equal power that fights with tanks and long range artillery. We are fighting rag-tag bombers and snipers who can strike without warning. Such attacks do not typically (thankfully) kill very many people per attack.

A point that is constantly overlooked is the number of seriously wounded soldiers that are returning home. I despise the word "casualties". Men and women with severe head wounds and missing limbs that don't count as "dead", but still have had there lives forever altered and in most cases ruined.

GPS and superior medical units are key factors in "saving" more lives. In previous wars, the "medics" were often guys who were chosen because they had a little more medical knowledge than the other people in their unit. Today, when an attack occurs, the location is known almost immediately and the wounded are cared for by highly trained medics and state of the art equipment.

Many of our troops returning home as "wounded" have injuries so severe that they would have died within minutes or hours in any previous conflict.

I am trying not to be skeptical for how this will all end, but it does not look good. At the very least, let's allow someone else give some input.