Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Living with the Decisions of the Decider

Guest Blog by Bartlebee

Well here we are, five years later.

Many of us said "don't go" but we were shouted down. Now, five years later and hundreds of thousands of dead, Bin Laden's still running around making home movies — and George Bush and Dick Cheney are still talking about patriotism and waving the flag.

The fruits of the decision to invade Iraq now have now been examined and the results are in. We're in a mess. Bush and Cheney did not have the courage to take the momentum we had immediately after 911 and rally the world to a UN supported US led incursion into Kashmir to root out Osama Bin Laden and his thugs and to garner the support of both India and Pakistan for such an incursion, which he could have done had he acted quickly and "decisively. Back when we had the momentum the world would have gotten behind us on any remotely reasonable plan to strike back at terrorists following the terrible images they witnessed of the 911 attacks. The world was with us. It was like we had been given an international credit card and the sky's the limit. And we could have used that card to buy our way into Kashmir and root out the son of a bitch and his thugs who murdered Americans on 911. We would have had him by the balls. But because they were cowards Bush and Cheney took that credit card and squandered the entire balance on invading Iraq, because they were afraid of what an invasion of Kashmir and UN and US forces in Pakistan and even India might mean.

Suppose Bin Laden supporters in Pakistan, where he enjoys the support of more than half the country, rose up and a war breaks out on a larger scale? Suppose it goes nuclear and Russia or China get pissed and things get hairy? These were the demons lurking in Bush's thoughts and he could not bring himself to confront them. So instead of dealing with the intricacies of such a potentially messy engagement in Pakistan and Kashmir, Bush and Cheney decided to squander the balance on their international 911 credit card by invading Iraq, making false claims about their involvement in 911 and WMD to sell their "poor mans war".

But the "bitch of the bunch" is where we are now.

Stuck literally between “Iraq and a hard place”.

Because now, that momentum is gone. The balance on our international 911 charge card is zero. In fact, it’s overdrawn. We are morally bankrupt as far as the rest of the world is concerned, so I guess it’s only fitting as far as fate is concerned that we’re also financially bankrupt as well. Problem is, we need the international credit to buy our way out of here. We need that international good moral credit to do the hard things we’re going to have to do to either capture or kill Osama Bin Laden and his thugs.

We know where they are. They’re in or around Kashmir or other remote regions in Pakistan, protected by his loyalists. All we have to do then is go get him right? Like we should have done when we had him cornered at Tora Bora and Bush let him go, like he did for about 70 his family members 2 days after 911 (still waiting for an answer on that one). But unfortunately Kashmir is a disputed region between two cold war countries, both that happen to be nuclear armed. And the US military is not allowed in, nor is the UN.

What we need to go get Bin Laden is “momentum”. Like the momentum we had right after 911. But that momentums gone and it ain’t coming back. Even if we were to be attacked again we won’t likely garner the international empathy we had post 911. Not after we’ve squandered their previous empathy so wantonly. Instead we’ll likely see a cold shoulder, and probably more than one lecture by other nations about starting wars with people who never attacked us. But we won’t gain their overwhelming support. The kind of support we’d need to initiate a US led UN supported incursion into Pakistan to get Bin Laden.

Come on. We all know he’s there. We’ve known that since 2003. But we just don’t have the means to go get him now. Bush and Cheney did not show courage after 911 by invading Iraq. They showed fear. Fear of going after Bin Laden like they promised they would because they thought it would be too hard. And possibly for other reasons yet to be identified.

So here we are, 5 years later, and no Bin Laden, Al Quaida going strong, and our international moral credit account bankrupt as is our national purse. And we have more important problems at the moment other than holding those responsible for this trainwreck accountable. We still have to get the guys who attacked us on 911. Make no mistake about it, we cannot let them get away. We need to capture or kill those responsible if we're ever hoping to be respected again by our enemies, whom we have many. Even more now thanks to our trainwreck that was the decision to invade Iraq. Bush and Cheney claim it doesn't matter and that we'll get him "sooner or later", but it does matter. It matters a lot. For all their talk of "going after the bad guys" the reality is they have done nothing to actually get the bad guys who they say attacked us. And at this rate Bin Laden will die of old age or kidney failure before we bring him to the "justice" Bush so loudly boasted of from his megaphone while standing on the bodies of 3000 dead Americans.

So now we are stuck, for the want of a better pun and at the cost of being redundant between Iraq and a hard place, the hard place being the chore still waiting the men and women of our military and our federal law enforcement agencies assuming we ever get around to electing a leader who will assign them to it.

And perhaps more difficult, we have to find a way to rebuild our squandered international moral credit before doing all this because until we do no ones going to just walk us into Kashmir and let us do the job we should have done in the fall of 2001, thanks to the Bush\Cheney doctrine. So 5 years later, all Bush and Cheney have given us is more overwhelming challenges to deal with, and we still have the one we had to deal with on Sept 12, 2001 waiting on our to do list.

Heckuva Job.



21 comments:

  1. Great Post Bartlebe...........isnt it a shame that all that hope and goodwill was squandered by a cabal of a few very greedy and very evil men with a an evil self serving agenda that is opposed in every way to freedom democracy and the will of the American people they are supposed to represent..............at this point i'm just hoping these treasonous chickenhawks leave without pulling another stunt and we get a President like Obama that can unite the country and start resoring our honor and integrity around the world and start governing for the benefit of the many they are SUPPOSED to represent rather than the elite few.

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  2. I'm keeping my fingers crossed Mike.

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  3. See Ya punk!!!

    I guess its time to take out the trash lierally and figuratively!

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  4. Lydia:
    Thanks for writing about McCain and we all learned alot on the last post....Bartle thank you for giving us something new to think and chew on - I will give it a good read....( to be honest I am so sick of Bush and his antics....and lies...but I will take a deep breath...and read...)

    I know a year from now when President Obama is president we will be facing a new era.....and work together to Clean Up the Mess these Criminals have left for us...but I have faith in Us- the We The People...

    ( btw way = thanks Lydia for the h/t about the music I just knew you were meant to hear it- and share it ;-)

    {{ btw - I am blogging on the Following issues this week- Top of the Blog- horrible YFZ Compound Issues, Tibet/Torch Issues, and of Course- THE War, and there will be Friday Night Soulfood....still...so anyone can come visit.....thanks again)

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  5. McCain wants 200 Friedman units in Iraq;

    Iraq: Six Months At A Time

    By George W bush and Dick Cheney with hopeful replacement wingnut St Johnny the Delusional

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  6. I see crusty's alcoholic mumsie let him move back into the basement again, so he can use HER computer.

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  7. BTW crusty thinkin' fur you son is just like your idiot hero,

    Hard Work which neither of you two clowns do very well;

    Like the most incompetent person to ever enter the white house, you shouldn't strain what little cranium capacity you have son.

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  8. Might this number;

    4032

    Be why this had to be written;

    Special Note:
    Due to a malicious attack on our web server we have removed most of the content from this site. The attack caused users to be redirected to random sites that have no affiliation with iCasualties. After a good deal of effort we think that we have identified problem and hope that we will soon return the site back to it's proper state. Please accept our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this has caused you.

    Michael White
    iCasualties.org


    That horrible number does seem to be rising rather quickly in the last 10 days.

    Wingnuts hate the truth, and try to destroy those who tell the truth.

    iCasualties.org is currently experiencing technical difficulties.

    Why do wingnuts hate America and what the founding fathers stood for?

    FREEDOM TO TELL THE TRUTH;

    to those in power,

    even reichwing people in power.

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  9. The real irony here is the right wing still tries to sell itself as better on defense.

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  10. Remember when Bush claimed he would listen to the Iraqis and leave if they wanted us to;

    HE LIED,

    Maliki Disagrees With Petraeus’s ‘Pause,’ Says ‘U.S. Troops Should Be Pulled Out’:

    There is one important decision-maker that Petraeus and Bush don’t seem to be listening to: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The AP reports that Maliki told Bush yesterday that he “disagrees” with Petraeus’s recommendation “citing the growing capabilities of Iraq’s own security forces”

    Bush lied who'd a thunk it?

    I guess if you're gonna lie about starting a war you might as well lie all through it as well. That is what Bush, cheney and the reichwingers do.

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  11. Well, what did you expect? We have allowed the Executive Branch to have too damn much unaccountable power. One of the solutions to this that I would like to propose is a Constitutional Amendment that would limit the Presidents role as Commander in Chief to only those times when Congress has legally declared war. This would, IMO, put the power back into the hands of the peoples elected represenatives and maybe just curb the trigger happy kind of mentality that seems to infest the Executive Branch these days

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  12. Great post Bartlebee. Of course the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq were never about catching bin Laden or fighting terrorism. Soon after the fall of the Taliban, Bush diverted our resources into trying to secure the area for his planned gas pipeline from the Caspian to Karachi to divert control of the natural gas in the former Soviet republics known as "the stans" from the control of Russia to that of the Carlyle Group, a holding company in which the bin Ladens, the Sauds, the Bushes, and other prominent Reich wing elites have considerable investments. Unocal was to build the pipeline, which is why Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal employee, was installed as president. Iraq was never about anything other than grabbing the oil and establishing bases from which to dominate the region.

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  13. Exactly Tomcat. I remember the pipeline. In fact they finished it correct? Is that where a lot of our soldiers are, guarding it?

    Question is, wheres the oil being pumped to?

    Who's benifiting from the cheap oil? I have some ideas, but I'd like to hear yours.

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  14. Frank Frey said...

    One of the solutions to this that I would like to propose is a Constitutional Amendment that would limit the Presidents role as Commander in Chief to only those times when Congress has legally declared war.

    We don't need an ammendment to the Constitution stating that, because the Constitution already does state that.

    See Article I, Section 8, Clause 11.

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  15. And we already have a law called the "War Powers Act" which also states that.

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  16. What we need is a congress with enough spine to enforce their authority.

    That I'm afraid is not happening anytime soon.

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  17. Which is why we need a good president.

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  18. Pray tell worf....just who do you think would be a good president?

    Certainly not somebody who wants 100 years of occupation of a foreign country when THEY do not want our troops there.

    Nor would I want somebody who thinks it is a good thing to keep running a higher and higher public debt with NO plan on ever repaying it. In the private sector any company which tried the republican financing solution to spending would quickly find themselves in bankruptcy court.

    BTW I certainly would never want anybody who was willing to undermine the very rights troops through out history died defending.

    It wouldn't be very good to try any dry drunks with issues of honesty and the ability to admit his mistakes, especially ones who went AWOL during their agreed upon years of service in the national guard (sorry we already got stuck with that rube right)

    Oh and of course NO person who wants to subjugate the US Constitution to any religious document, EVER.


    After removing everyone who lies about doing what I posted about, I guess you ain't got many lying clowns left in your dishonest pedophile protection criminally organized party of corruption and un-family values do ya?

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  19. GREAT ARTICLE Bartlebee, thank you.

    I just posted a new article about our upcoming guests this week. Monday we have Valerie Bertinelli in a really personal, fun interview. She's a Progressive and gets into politics a bit. And Van Halen.

    And we also have Bill Press, Senators Tom Daschle, Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chaffee sometime this week or next.

    Stay tuned.

    Bartlebee - I can repost this excellent article again after all these interviews.

    Your article about Bush, the Decider is timeless and important.

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  20. Exactly Tomcat. I remember the pipeline. In fact they finished it correct? Is that where a lot of our soldiers are, guarding it?

    Actually, Bart they never even started it. They used a bunch of soldiers to try to clear the way for it instead of hunting bin Laden, but before they could control its long course, Bush invaded Iraq.

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  21. Among the oddities lying around is this War Game : a predictor of events if my recollection serves.
    http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB207/index.htm

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