A Clarification

For those who don't' know me very well, and may not understand where I am coming from, it may have appeared as if some of the posts before were critical of the United States Military, and the troops in the field.

I just want to clarify that I think, with a few scattered exceptions, that our troops have performed admirably. I think we should all be proud of the work our soldiers are doing under very trying circumstances.

However, I remain very critical of the decisions made by the administration that have failed to use these soldiers in the best way possible.

To be specific, I think we should have done more in Afghanistan to prevent it from returning to a warlord state. The decisions not to do that were not made by any soldiers on the ground and I am well aware that we still do have a troops in Afghanistan, who must be operating under very difficult situations. My criticism is not aimed at them; but at a policy of minimal involvement in Afghanistan that has made their situation more difficult. There is clearly a difference between doing nothing and doing sufficient. We are somewhere in that grey area.

I think that the Bush Administration, specifically Donald Rumsfeld, tried to pursue the Iraq war on the cheap, which lead to, among other things, the looting of the Iraqi Museum referenced below. I'm not arguing that American soldiers should have, on their own, run over to the museum and protected it from the loiters at the cost of their own lives. That would be ludicrous of me to suggest that. While I strongly deplore the loss of historical artifacts caused by the looting, I would not want to sacrifice troops mindlessly to protect them.

I am suggesting that Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush, and others who planned this war failed to anticipate the looting and other civil unrest (seduced as they were by Ahmad Chabili and other Neo-Conservative's visions of happy Iraqis throwing flowers). Why didn't our troops go into combat with the proper equipment and the proper training and the proper numbers? Why did we allow the looting? Again, because the Bush administration was trying to hide the cost of this war from the American people, and wanted to believe that they could accomplish their foreign policy goals without harming their Domestic agenda (of, as we discussed yesterday, enormous tax cuts).

I hope this clarifies my position for any who are confused.