Having started two wars and failed miserably at winning both, what do you do? Apparently you start a third one. If you haven't heard already, US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in Iraq, arresting five people in the process. Correct me if I'm wrong, but invading a foreign nation's consulate would constitute an act of war. And starting a third war when you don't even have enough troops for the two wars you're already engaged in is, suffice to say, tremendously stupid.
But the warmongers are happy, I'm sure. There is apparently no problem on this earth that can't be solved by throwing bombs at it. The rationale is the same rehashed moronic arguments we heard in the build-up to the Iraq war.
Ahmadinejad is insane! But if the rationale for going to war is nut job leaders, why didn't we go to war with the Soviet Union? Granted that there were a few close calls, such as the Cuban missile crisis, but most people realized it would be a moronic idea. There couldn't possibly be a good outcome. And why are we supporting Islom Karimov of Uzbekistan and treating Uzbekistan as an ally in the war on terror, if that is an actual concern?
Iran has WMDs! But most experts say they are a decade away from having nukes. How about exhausting all other options instead of skipping straight ahead to the very last and possibly disastrous resort?
The Iranian people are oppressed and needs to be liberated! They'll greet us as liberators! The leadership in Iran are tyrannical madmen who oppress their own people, that is not in dispute. What is in dispute, however, is the theory that you can turn a brutal dictatorship into a liberal democracy simply through the use of war. We don't go around invading all such countries, because as the evidence clearly shows, it's a tremendous undertaking that is simply not feasible and has the potential to have disastrous consequences. The brutal civil war we're currently witnessing in Iraq is a testament to that. Absolutely nothing new, and absolutely nothing of substance.
War is not, and never should be, something to seek out. War is inevitably death and destruction. It is tremendous suffering. It is homes destroyed. It is people fleeing. It is people dying of thirst and starvation. It is people caught in crossfires. It is people losing limbs. It is people losing sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers.
War IS hell. That's why war must always be the very last resort. War is an act of desperation, not of glory. When the US entered World War II, it was because there simply was no other option. And it took considerable sacrifices to win, during the war as well as after it.
The Bush administration starting yet another war that is destined to fail as spectacularly as the last two is truly the height of stupidity.
Have the Bush doctrine in any way helped to win the war on terror? The answer is an unequivocal no. In Athens, Greece, a US Embassy was hit in a rocket attack just last night.
It's 5 years since 9/11, and what does Bush have to show for his efforts? Afghanistan is mostly out of coalition control and in the hands of the same warlords who've always controlled the country, the Taliban have set up shop in neighboring Waziristan and are still active in eastern Afghanistan, Bin Ladin remains at large, Iraq is descending into a bloody civil war that threatens to destabilize an already unstable region, 3,800 Americans and other coalition forces have died between the two wars, several terrorist attacks have occurred in Spain and the UK with casualties in the hundreds. In other words, the Bush doctrine has been utterly ineffective and nothing short of disastrous.
Yet he wants another war. God help us all.
