McCain is almost a tragic guy, as is Murtha. When the administration was first contemplating invading Iraq Murtha was for it, and McCain was critical. McCain was right in his criticisms. The very idea of invading a sovereign country without using sufficient resources to do so offended people with military training and the ability to look at the war strategically. But most of those people kept their mouths shut, or even went along. If Colin Powel had spoke his mind instead of running his dog and poney show. If even one leader of the Joint Chiefs or the administration had defected publicly. The invasion might have been stopped.
Our leaders are cowards. They kiss behind and act like sychophants until they have a retirement check and then write tell alls. What a shame that they can't say "I resign on principle." If they did then crooks like this current bunch couldn't get away with all this.
But once it began, the die was cast. I want the US to pull out, but I also know that there is no easy or honorable way to extract ourselves from this SNAFU without at least some sacrifice of blood and treasure. Do we want another Darfur? Does anybody remember what it looked like when we pulled out of Saigon. The US doesn't have the stomach for creating colonies or suppressing insurgencies. We should be leaving sovereign nations to run their own business, and only helping when we are wanted or when the help reflects our capabilities.
As Colin Powel warned "We broke it, we own it [the mess not the country]. Time to get out. But that ain't going to be easy.
Of course Congress could just cut off funding to Iraq. That might work, it might make things a whole lot uglier.
Chris
You know the story. Devadatta wanted to kill the Buddha. So he took a big male elephant, waited until it was in a male rut, and then gave it alcohol to drink and turned it loose on the Buddha. The Buddha stopped the elephant, calmed it, and even made friends with it. Years later, when the Buddha's own disciples were fighting he went to visit his elephant friend. The elephant was better company than his human friends, so he stayed a while.
We all need a break now and then. And we are all a little bit like an elephant ourselves. Male Elephants go into a rut, during which time they are so emotional and can get so angry, that some of them become almost insanely dangerous. The "rut" is the power of desire. They have to be chained down or they'll hurt themselves, or at least a lot of others. Humans can be similar. When it comes to getting in the way of basic desires humans act like elephants. No matter how polished or "adept" in discipline or philosophy a person might be, human desires have a way of getting people to throw reason right out the window.
Politics is like that too. Try to argue with a person who is deeply attached to a cause, and it is like arguing with a wall. The more rationale of us will tie each other up in sophisticated knots rather than cut the nonsense and admit reality -- if we are attached to a particular idea. That is why folks chose war over peace, gamble millions of other people's money, or engage in fraud. The "thrill", the emotions, or the "anger" can completely blind a person to mistakes and prevent anyone from observing what to a non-attached outsider seems pure nonsense. The human rut.
So spending time with elephants is a good thing. We need the slow deliberate calm as an alternative to our own kind of dangerous rutting. We have to ask ourselves, "do I really need this." And if we don't really need it, find a way to tell our rutting hearts that that is so.
The reports are coming out of the field that interrogators are switching back to the tried and true methods of the milk of human kindness, that reinforces cognitive dissonance and breaks down enemy feelings by showing them that their preconceptions are only that -- pre-conceptions. The CIA/Militar/Junta way of getting information is only good as state terror, not as law enforcement or as a way to a better civil society. Repression and evil ways to govern aren't just evil but they are bad government and counter-productive. The country was in a rut. Some of us are still in the rut. Maybe the "alcohol" of 9/11 is wearing off.
We can pray so.
Chris