Monday, August 15, 2005

Our Country is NOT safer

Troops are being killed and maimed for life daily in Iraq. There is no timetable for withdrawal of our dedicated and loyal men and women risking their lives daily there.
There is little hope of democratization of a society that is still feudal and tribal which has no experience in political compromise and negotiation or the sharing of leadership.
We know now that Mr. Bush's reasons for going to war were lies, concocted lies, not accidential lies but planned and orchestrated. Just as he lied repeatedly to convince the American poeple in his Social Security privatization efforts, he prefers to live in his protected and syncophantic world.
Something is happening in Crawford, Texas since August 6, just in the past week. The anti-war effort has a very human face: Cindy Sheehan. More and more citizens are awakening to the realization that the Iraqi war is a quagmire and cannot be won. There are no attainable objectives and except to avoid the shame of allowing the country to descend into civil war, there are no good reasons to stay. Still that is a good enough reason, but for how long and at what cost to our military and also our national prestige.

When Mr. Bush was elected, I predicted to a conservative Republican friend that he would exit the presidency in disgrace. Part of my professional work as a psychologist is assessment for hiring, in a number of occupations, fire, police, public school bus drivers, and others. My gut sense of #43 was that he had no integrity, no backbone, and no genuine moral sensibility, that he was a "front," a car salesman, a phony.

What do you think now? How do you think history will judge this Mr. Bush? What was your own estimate then, and has it changed now? Has he made our country safer? Or had he galvanized hatred against our country and the West on the part of Muslim extremists around the world? Is Osama bin Laden winning the "war on terror?"

Comments invited. I am grateful this morning that I live in a society, with hard won freedoms which this President does not really understand or respect, which allows me to say and to proclaim these thoughts.

Such will be the growing disillusionment in the war, as it was in Vietnam, that the Republicans are likely to lose seats in next year's congressional election, and if so, Mr. Bush is in real danger of being impeached for treasonable behavior, far worse than anything Nixon or Clinton did.

These are interesting and challenging times in which to live. The fascinating paradox to me re #43 is how blind has been the religious right to his character. Because he mouths the right words and has a daily prayer service, they seem to support him unconditionally. What shall be their response as his support and popularity continues to decline?

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

When Bush was elected, I said that we would be at war within a year...
I cannot understand how his lies go unquestioned. I cannot understand why no one challanges him. He should have been impeached by now. He is making the Middle East more unstable & making our country more of a target everyday.

August 17, 2005  

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