The Sad, Sad Truth Of 2006

By BlackJack

It was the night before the start of the Iraq War and I was tucking my son in bed. At the time I didn't know that the war would begin the next day but, because all attempts to find an alternative solution had failed and the build-up of forces was complete, the war seemed imminent. As I said prayers with my little boy I started to tear up - I suddenly pictured that somewhere in Iraq a man my own age was tucking his children into bed that night not knowing if any of them would survive the night.

Three years later and all that I had feared and worse have come true. We've never found those 'weapons of mass destruction' that were just moments from being launched at the United States. The 'mobile biological weapons labs' turned out to be milk trucks. We were never greeted by the throngs of newly-freed Iraqis. Thousands of American men and women are dead and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as well. None of us are any safer than we were that day the first bomb dropped.

I heard something some time ago that troubled me deeply. Watching one of the thousands of political pundits - who along with the defense contractors are the only ones to really benefit from this war - I heard something that sent a chill down my spine. He said the irony of the Iraq war, and all that has transpired because of our 'War on Terror', was that the Iraqi people now had more freedom than Americans. I suddenly realized that we weren't just on the wrong track but that we'd jumped the tracks and were now barreling down the side of the mountain.

During my lifetime the United States had lost a bit of it's credibility around the globe but in the last 6 years it's been destroyed altogether. In the past, for every person who looked at America as an evil giant there was someone who saw it as the shining light of freedom. Now they look upon us as unstable and untrustworthy. They'd as soon trust us to do the right thing as they'd trust a mentally unstable person to watch their children. Our leadership in Washington doesn't seem to care.

I never thought I'd remember the days of lifelong bureaucracy and entrenched political leadership as being the 'good old days' but in comparison to the current state of our Washington leadership it actually seemed to have the best interest of our nation in mind. Occasionally a vote would cause the party line divisions to be exposed but for the most part the two-party system worked. Now there are no checks and balances and there is such an extreme polarization that nothing at all is getting done.

The sad truth is that I think the last few decent men who decided upon a life of public service will soon retire in disgust and leave us all at the mercy of the party faithful who are only concerned with furthering the cause. It's been three years of lies, three years of running roughshod over the Constitution and three years of pocket-lining.

What is the real cost to us all? What price can you put on losing honor and trust around the globe while China and the European Union are growing into economic superpowers? What price can you put on the damage we've done to the global environment that we'll be leaving for our children's grandchildren to clean up? What price can you put on the lives of the servicemen and women who died in Iraq who trusted us to not send them needlessly to their deaths and we've failed them. We've failed them all. God help us.