Well, if you'll remember, I didn't
decide it was a bad idea. I always thought so.
Now, you don't think that the feeling that they've been hoodwinked regarding the whole business has anything to do with the "public's" (a public that you, my friend are a part of) change of heart, do you?
In fact, from day one it's become more and more clear that this whole Iraq business is a put up job having nothing to do with national security. You keep railing about "cleaning up our mess" but it's not in fact our mess. It was there before we arrived and it will be there after we leave. If anything, we are exacerbating it rather than helping the situation.
I'll say it again. The current policy has no hope of working in either the short or the long term. Our only viable choices, in my view, are to stomp on their throats until they capitulate, a policy clearly fraught with many ancillary dangers, or simply stop wasting lives and resources on a hopeless situation with no hope of satisfactory resolution. Hell, no clear consensus of what a satisfactory resolution would be. What will really happen is that we'll continue on as we have been for a few more years until everyone is fundamentally disgusted with the whole thing, then we'll pull out with some self-righteous platitudes about how we "did the right thing" according to "the big picture." Despite what you or I think the best course of action would be, regardless of who gets elected, that's what is
really going to happen.
I personally think that it's important to hang on to your self-respect and your ideals with all of your might. It's just as important to be realistic and dispassionate about what will really happen.
Doesn't particularly satisfy me, but I'm not about to immolate myself in front of the Capitol to make my point.