[Vision2020] Grim figures

[Joan Opyr]

Dear Visionaries,

Say, here's an idea: let's forget about the war we're currently fighting and just refight one of our old wars instead.  Perhaps World War II?  That's always a crowd pleaser.  Hence, Dick Cheney and other GOP big-wigs are making a Herculean effort to compare George W. Bush to Winston Churchill.  (Yeah, I know; it's akin to comparing the Taco Bell chihuahua to Rin Tin Tin, but they can dream, can't they?)  In the meantime, the mainstream media , and, I'm sorry to say, the Democrats, are fixated on Vietnam, a war which ended (or so I thought) thirty-five years ago.

Should shrapnel count for a Purple Heart or should you have to be whacked by a full-metal jacket?  Did George W. Bush use his daddy's name and influence to get into the Texas Air National Guard and did he then have the unmitigated gall to bug out of his last two years of service because he just didn't feel like going?  And what about Dick Cheney and his five deferments, and Tom DeLay and the pressing obligations of the Texas bug extermination business that kept him out of Southeast Asia?

All thrilling and important and very, very politically relevant questions, I'm sure, but aren't they also helping us (making us?) lose sight of the war we're currently fighting?  Remember Iraq?  Southwest of Iran, north of Kuwait?  Full of oil, and ethnic factions, and 140,000 US troops?  The Washington Post reports today that while we've all been consumed with news of the Republican National Convention and the now-discredited Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, this past August has been the bloodiest month of the war so far.  Since the partial transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on June 28th, 148 US troops have been killed and 1100 wounded.  Compare that to the 138 troops who were killed during the actual invasion between March and April of 2003.  It was just after that, in early May, that Mr. Bush donned his flight suit and delivered that infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Lincoln.  My, how time flies -- upside down and backwards.   

As both political parties' rush to be the most macho, I think we're losing sight of something important here.  The present.  The following is clipped from todays' Washington Post:              
   
"That trend is a grim indication that, 18 months after the invasion, the fighting appears to be intensifying rather than waning. While attention has been focused largely on standoffs in Najaf and other well-publicized hotspots, an analysis of the figures shows the U.S. military has taken more casualties elsewhere, including the deaths of about 44 troops in the western province of Anbar and 10 others in the city of Samarra.

The wide geographic dispersion of the violence reflects the strength of a resurgent opposition and also frames the challenge U.S. commanders face in the coming months as the United States seeks to hold an election to establish a new Iraqi government, said military officers and defense analysts.

'The 'peace' has been bloodier than the war,' said Capt. Russell Burgos, an Army reservist who recently returned from a tour of duty with an aviation regiment in Balad, Iraq. In his view, the U.S. experience in Iraq is coming to resemble Israel's painful 18-year occupation of parts of southern Lebanon."

If you want to read the rest -- and I strongly urge you to do so -- go to www.washingtonpost.com.  They'll probably ask you to register, but registration is free.  Listen.  We've spent $200 billion so far in Iraq, and we won't be leaving that quagmire anytime soon.  In the meantime, we have 1.4 million more people in America living below the poverty line than we had four years ago.  We have 1 million more people who are unemployed.  One-third more are now uninsured.  To quote the old bumper sticker, where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?

I watched 60 Minutes last night, and while the partisan in me is glad to see Mr. Bush finally beginning to reap what he's sown, another part of me, the better part, says, for God's sake, let's step out of the shit and back onto the sidewalk.  Yes, I know he started it, but we'd better finish it.  Let's stop talking about 1972 and start talking about 2004.  And 2005.  And what we're going to do when the babyboomers start to retire, Medicare goes bust, all the good jobs have moved to China and Bangladesh, and we're still stuck in Iraq with an ever-increasing price tag and an unendurable death toll.

Now's the time.  This is the place.  Bring on the debates.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment   Get more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
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