Why am I depressed?

5/24/04

I know what is going on in Iraq. I look deep into the news coming out of the area and I see the positive items. I see US troops rebuilding schools. I see large majority of American troops behaving in a correct even politically correct manner, even though it is causing problems for them. I see a country that is not ruled by a dictator that has murdered he own people and others with disdain and impunity. I see a country where most of the economy is becoming solvent.

Unfortunately, I also see a daily pounding of news showing the troops killed. I see the scenes of carnage and destruction. I can hear the country slowly being dragged to the conclusion that the war was a mistake. It's Vietnam, says Kennedy. There was torture in Abu Ghraib prison and we are terrible people and have no moral high ground to take. These comments are as pertinent and true as a group of children taunting each other with "did not" and "did so".

Iraq was invaded primarily as the next step after Afghanistan in the war on terror. Part of the justification was the strong possibility that Hussain had WMD. A nuclear program that was documented by every intelligence agency in the world. A chemical and biological program that was not accepted by the whole world but demonstrated on his own citizens as well as the hapless Iranian soldiers.

Saddam has not been proven to be involved in the 9/11 attack but he has been shown to have connections to the earlier attack on the world trade centers. He has well documented contributions to Hamas as well as other terrorist organizations. To assume that there was no connection to Al-Qaeda is simply absurd. The argument that Hussain was secular and could not work with the strongly religious Al-Qaeda dies in the face of the Arab proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Osama ben Laden could easily put aside his dislike of the secular Saddam to obtain the needed "toys" with which to attack the Great Satan of America.

If we do not complete the task in Iraq, we will surely shift into neutral, as George Bush said, and we will have learned that the mighty US cannot any longer fight a complete war. It is possible that the end of western civilization would result. The science fiction depiction shown on so many poor movies that show society as living from hand to mouth in the shadow of the great cities of the world may be more prophecy than fiction.

It is difficult to understand how the public in this country can expect to continue to exist in the current free and unfettered state if they are too stupid to connect the dots that exist today. Islamic fundamentalism, terror, politically correctness, exporting politics worldwide.

We must again learn that politicos must stop at the shore and we must support whoever is in office while fighting a war. Fight about policies, not objectives. Fight about domestic issues, but not about the will to fight. The enemy of our civilization is listening and taking heart from the wild screeching originating from those who jealously covet the power of the national government. It must stop!

I spoke with a friend this week and he asked me if I thought we were making any progress in the rest of the world in fighting terrorism. I told him that I think that if Bush is reelected, we will make more progress, but right now, with all the rhetoric coming from the left that if the President were to tell some terrorist-supporting leader anything, he would get a laugh in return. What leader in the world is going to make a change in policy based on what the weakened President of the United States says? The proper response would be " ask me again if you get reelected."

President Bush is speaking tonight. I hope to hear that he is resolute. I hope to see the explanations to what the future will be. I need to see some response from the public acknowledging that we are fighting a war and we want to win more than we want to argue with each other.