The President will speak tonight
by Charlie Leck
The President will speak tonight. This morning, my wife suggested I not watch it. She doesn't want me to get too stirred up. I don't blame her and the TV would be in danger.
I am very gloomy about the projections of hundreds of thousands of deaths by massacre if our troops were to pull out of Iraq. Are you old enough to remember all of this from Vietnam? Why do we do these things? How do we keep getting ourselves involved in useless, wasteful wars?
One local radio personalityput it quite well the other day. He said: "You can't unbite the apple!"*
It expresses the problem we have now in Iraq. It is a warning that President Bush should have heeded several years ago. It's a warning future presidents should carefully heed.
We are now mired in horrendous problems in Iraq. Two years will not solve them. Neither will four years or 10 years. Recently some experts have talked about us staying for decades in the basic role of occupiers.
This is all on our plate now because we took a bite of the apple. Unfortunately the entire mess was based on dishonesty or certainly, to put it in the kindest possible way, because of misinformation.
We went to Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden. We didn't get him. We went to Iraq to get Weapons of Mass Destruction that weren't there.
When we bit the apple we ruined Iraq's entire infrastructure and its economic engine. Under the present circumstances it is not possible to get them totally rebuilt.
When we bit the apple we gave international terrorism exactly what it was looking for; that is, a perfect excuse to use violence to keep American pinned down, exhausting its military forces and wasting its funds.
When we bit the apple we miscalculated the time and effort it would take to get in and out of Iraq.
Now the military experts have told us the utter and complete truth we were not told before we bit the apple; that is, that it may take another 10 years or more of military involvement in Iraq to solve the incredible problems we created there. To repeat, the military tells us that hundreds of thousands will die if we leave.
Not since that time in the Garden of Eden has such a Pandora's Box been opened by taking a simple bite of the apple.
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