A Fractured Republican September 12, 2007
Posted by clucas30 in Uncategorized.trackback
I consider myself a Republican. I am a conservative. My family has a long history with the Republican party. However, I’m very disgusted with the Republican Party right now and it mainly stems from my dissatisfaction with President Bush and the war in Iraq.
I was lied to and I don’t take that lightly. I remember President Bush’s address to Congress and the Nation when he said that an attack on our country was imminent if we didn’t do something about Iraq. He said that there was ‘undisputed’ evidence that Iraqi had possession of ‘weapons of mass destruction’.
Well, guess what….the WMDs either didn’t exist, or the U.S. Military let them get out of the country (which is worse). Either way, there was a blatant lie or a blatant failure. No way around that.
Is the world better off without Saddam? Absolutely. He was a bad guy. However, I’m not so sure Iraq is a better place. The argument can certainly be made that Iraq is a more dangerous place now than when Saddam had it.
Bottom line… Botched reason to go to war. Botched war. The troops have been great and I salute them. Their leadership has been the flaw….
Ask yourself a few questions. Did you write your Congressman and demand an investigation before we entered Iraq? Or were you mad enough about 9/11 that it was easy to take the Government’s word that Saddam had WMDs? If you supported the war in the beginning, did you really want to hear that Saddam didn’t have WMDs? Is it possible that you would have been in favor of the invasion based soley on the fact that Saddam refused to cooperate with the UN? Most people in this country, Democrats included, wanted this war and were not interested in hearing any reasons why we shouldn’t go to war. We wanted revenge for 9/11. Before the war, did you really think about how many of our men and women would die for this cause, and if so, did you think it would be worth it then? Now think about this; as republicans we often preach self-sufficiency, stand on your own two feet, be responsible for your own actions and don’t blame others for your problems. I think if you were for the war in the beginning, then YOU made that decision. You can blame the President, or the CIA or anyone else, but you are an educated, bright person. To say that you have been duped by President Bush or the CIA or by the Republicans as a whole is underestimating your intelligence and deflecting blame on others. To make a decision and to not deal with the consequences of that decision is not unlike having children out of wedlock and then accepting welfare, or like choosing to sleep late every day and subsequently losing your job and then accepting unemployment benefits, (I think Republicans call these kind of people Democrats). Now ask yourself this question; have you ever utterd these words, “I was wrong abut the war”. It’s a lot easier to shift you stance on the war 4 years after the fact. Now that all the ‘fun’ of war is gone (seeing the bombing of Bagdad via nightvision cameras), did you just now realize that war truly is hell? You should have known this going in. If you recall, President Bush said many times that this would be a very difficult war and that it would last for a long time, and when we started this, the thought of a long, difficult war didn’t seem to bother many people. I for one supported the war before it started and support it still today. I wish that we didn’t have war, but it is what it is and the best thing to do now is to stay strong with our support of this country including our soldiers, our citizens and our leader. So here’s the real bottom line: This is our war, not just Bush’s war, not just the CIA’s war it’s ours. Did we rush in? Did we base our decision on emotions? Maybe. But much like the child of a one-night stand (something also rushed into and based soley on emotions) it is still real and we still have to deal with it. So now that this war is our child, are you going to support it, or continue whining about why you have it?