I am thoroughly angry and disgusted as I sit to write this. One can hardly have any other feeling after hearing the froth and bluster pouring forth from Washington D.C. surrounding the bill to set a date for beginning to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. Costs to United States taxpayers contained within it are reported to be over 100 Billion dollars as if those amounts were comparable to next month's dry cleaning bill. One feels the need of a good wet and soapy cleansing after listening to the amounts being larded into the bill. March Madness isn't just limited to basketball. It runs year round in Washington D.C.
Yet this is just another news cycle, one of any number that will regularly come and go with the requisite amount of ballyhoo and near rote response from all quarters. All will be forgotten next week in the wake of the coming Headline Story that will gently elbow this shameful mess into also ran status. Here we see America, once the shining example to the world, reduced to squabbling, grunting and tortured logic as she tears out her entrails in a spectacle of banal congressional wrangling. Here we see America's Congress, a collection of pandering posturing salesmen, itching to auction off our national heritage, our children's futures and our military's blood in a never-ending quest for the next election smooch.
Were there anyone in Washington with a spine instead of a floating barometer for political tides, there would be a simple bill advanced, stating plainly the intent of congress to demand specific requirements for continued financing of the military adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan. This brave soul would succinctly point out America has grown weary of the constant reauthorization of funds for continuing an effort which is producing few tangible results, and far too many casualties. It is exceedingly clear that the purpose of these piecemeal appropriations bills is to skirt Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 12, of the Constitution which clearly states: “[Congress shall have the power] To raise and support Armies,
but no Appropriations of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than Two Years;”. This business in Iraq has been grinding along for over 4 years now, with no discernible end in sight, so it is simple to see that any and all appropriations have been approved for an enterprise that is exceeding the two year limit. To try and wiggle out of responsibility by parsing that any individual appropriation was for less than a year's time is to be disingenuous to the point of being seen an idiot.
There need to be clearly delineated goals that we are looking for, which, if not met, will cause all American forces to be immediately withdrawn. To deliberately link U.S. involvement in Iraq to Iraq's internal safety is a senseless exercise in futility, as they seem to lack any spark of interest in maintaining conditions that are conducive to no bombs blowing up daily. There are historical divisions and hatreds in that area of the world which date back hundreds of years, information the average American has neither the time nor interest to study and learn, and it is the average American who is doing the fighting and dying there.
It is also simplistically dishonest to blandly state that if we don't fight the terrorists “over there”, they will follow us home and attack us here. The United States' borders are basically wide open for any and all to wander across at any time, with even less chance of being shot by a U.S. military patrol, making us a much juicier target, for those so inclined, while U.S. forces are occupied overseas.
No, the only reason that this debacle continues to drag on, consuming American resources and lives, is the simple fact that there are political careers to be made. So long as the sleepy American populace is lulled by the constant drone emanating from their televisions, so long as the gluttonous American consumer is content to trade their children's futures for cents on the dollar, so long as corporate America is pleased to sell our heritage to the lowest bidder, we shall continue to slide ever faster into the yawning void of third world status, and this nation's government will have been as complicit as the voting taxpayers who contentedly pulled the lever to keep sending the same stuffed suits back to Washington over and over again.
