Murtha's Momentum

I couldn't be more happy with Pennsylvania Congressman Murtha's recent comments, suggesting that the Iraq war is a 'failure wrapped in illusions', and recommending that we immediately begin to pull our troops out.

Lost in the cacophony of the Bush administration's panicked reaction though, were Murtha's suggestions that what really needs to happen now, is for the Iraqi's to take responsibility for their own revolution.

Think about our own revolution, and imagine if American patriots had been unwilling to act on their own, but had been 'rescued' by a pre-emptive attack by the French.

Imagine that the French had taken every major city in colonial America, had captured every British-appointed governor, and had an equivalent amount of troops stationed for five years after the fall of, perhaps, Boston.

Do you think Americans would have seized the opportunity and established the democracy we now know?

The Iraqis will not take seriously what they need to do, until and unless they are facing that situation.
It is of course questionable, whether the Iraqis have a strong enough desire for democracy to seize the opportunity that we have given them. But that is all the more reason why we need to pull out as soon as possible.

Would it better to stay five years more, lose another 2000 American soldiers, and then watch the Iraqis give back their country to the Bathists?

Is there anyone who really questions that in ten years, we will be looking at three, perhaps even four countries, where there was once the single Iraq?

Is there anyone unaware of the fact that the Iraq we know today, was the colonial creation of the British?

The Iraq War will go down in history as one of the greatest blunders of American foreign policy ever. The only thing worse would be to increase our losses by stubbornly refusing to acknowledge these facts.

The reasonable man?

It was probably Miers herself that proposed the scenario unfolding now: she would sacrifice herself, serve her President as a distraction from the hypocrisy that was filling the White House faster than the flood waters had overwhelmed New Orleans, and the worst case scenario would be that she, a close friend, would end up on the Supreme Court.

If all worked as planned, however, Miers would be the lamb that made way for the lion: Alito - by all reports 'a nice guy', a 'very respectful, decent man', yet someone who somehow found a way to argue that wives need to notify their husbands if they choose to have an abortion, and that machine guns are a god-given right.

Alito finds precedent, of course, respects the law, but ultimately does so in service of an inflexible mind. Alito -offered in replacement of the first woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court: a woman who called the notion that wives had to notify their husbands if they wanted an abortion, "repugnant".

Can Alito explain these bizarre decisions, in light of his so-called respect for the Constitution, and the importance of established precendent? Given his brilliant mind, and reputation for honesty, that should not be a problem. If there is an explanation, wholly consistent with the reputed respect for the Constitution that the right wing's apologists whitewash over every discussion of judicial philosophy, then he may be confirmable.

More likely he will suddenly lose his ability to speak: become tongues-tied (a related but often unreported variation of the 'speaking in tongues' phenomena) and will only regain the ability to converse in everyday English after he is confirmed.