President Bush was asked in an interview this week why our military and their families are bearing all the sacrifices of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His response was telling.
The American people are sacrificing, too, Bush said. Their peace of mind is disturbed by the images of carnage they see on their televisions.
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The educator-in-chief said that it's been his view all along that the American people need to keep living their lives without making sacrifices while 25,000 of their sons and daughters have been killed or wounded in combat in the last five years.
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Our volunteer military is working just fine, Bush said. It can continue to shoulder the entire weight of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars that have ground the Army and the Marine Corps beyond the breaking point.
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Our troops and our military are now in deep trouble. Many of our soldiers and Marines are now pulling their third or fourth combat tours.
Those tours are being extended beyond the normal 12 months and the troops' time at home for family and training is being reduced from the promised and badly needed 12 months, all in order to man Bush's "surge" or escalation or augmentation in Iraq. And now Defense Secretary Gates has conceded that more troops are needed in Afghanistan, too. [emphases mine]
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My peace of mind is disturbed every time I see the Chimp on TV.
Another year of this mess and we won't have an Army or Marine Corps to defend us, and conscription will be necessary. The Idiot-in-Chief is whistling past the graveyard, hoping to dump the entire mess in the next President's lap but I don't think it can wait that long, no matter how deeply in denial the Chimp seems.
I don't know how these guys have kept it together this long and it doesn't look like there's an end in sight. Wait. You're gonna start seeing the nasty shit that went on in Vietnam, more innocents killed as more and more troops lose their perspective, more fragging incidents as guys who begin to feel their only way out of Iraq will be in a "transport tube"; some gung ho, green, 2nd Looie gets in one of these guys' grille area at the wrong time he's gonna be on the wrong end of "friendly fire".
This is a mess and the "Bush/McCain Surge" will only make it worse for both sides. It's why I'm so annoyed that we're running the presidential race already. I don't care about Hillary's motives for signing on to blocking the surge as long as she's on board. I'll worry about folks running for President next year. I want the troops home and out of that meatgrinder this year. I'm proud of the Rethugs who crossed the line too, regardless of their motives. Chuck Hagel, Sam Brownback, Norm Coleman, Snowe, Voinovich, and the rest, good on yas. I don't care why, I'm just glad you did.
I'm glad you're all starting to see we are not only breaking our armed forces in Iraq, we're breaking our nation. Time for the rest of you to step up too. Remember what you were whining about 2 weeks ago? Bipartisanship? This is how it works.
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