Let the Iraqi People Win! And let the US People Win, too!

Originally penned Monday, June 27, 2005

It seems like many many moons ago when President George W. Bush landed that aircraft on a Navy ship and declared “mission accomplished” for the Iraq war. If mission was truly accomplished, then why didn’t he pull out the majority of the US troops? When someone says “mission accomplished” it usually means that you did all you needed to do and it is time to call it a day. The time to call it a day and let our troops come home was yesterday.

So, what was the mission that Dubya claimed was accomplished? Well, we found no WMD (weapons of mass destruction), we caught the evil dictator Saddam Hussein, left most of Iraq in a ravaged mess, and who knows what’s happened to the vast oil reserves in Iraq. What else do we need to accomplish in Iraq? Is that it? The oil in Iraq? Is Halliburton not succeeded in raping Iraq of all their oil, yet? You know, we’ve got to fund Cheney’s private retirement account somehow. And, I think Dick has found a way to take it all with him when he finally dies.

I am not sure what Dubya’s mission in Iraq is anymore. Does he and the US Right-wingers need a “victory” in Iraq? I think the unspoken word is that if we pull out now, that we, er the US Right-wingers have lost this “war.” This “war” in Iraq is NOT a war for the US of A to win or lose. This is about the citizens of Iraq and how they will live today, tomorrow, and into the future. The longer we stay in Iraq, the more we are suppressing their own freedoms to build their country back up the way they want it from the ravages of war. I say let the Iraqi people win this war.

Give Iraq back to the people, and let them create the country, the government, and the system that will give them the backbone to be their own country. Let them fight for the country that they want. Sure we can help them, but let the fight be theirs, not ours. Then, the freedom they achieve will be their freedom.

And, let the US citizens win this war against foreign oil dependency. Make the USA become truly a free country. Take the money we are spending to make Iraq a more messed up country, and use it to help our own country to rely on more self-sustaining energy sources (not nuclear, we can be way more creative with less risk, like wind-we’ve got plenty of that in our nation’s capital-and bio-based energies). Creating self-sustaining energies in the USA will employ US citizens and give decent wages and benefits. It will bring money back into local, state and federal governments. It will bring value back to the US wage-earner, and back to US natural resources. It will make living in the US healthier and less polluting. And in the end, it will make the USA’s freedom truly our own freedom, not dependent on some middle east government royalty, or the lending of some far eastern country’s money.