Bob Herbert wrote a great column for The New York Times today titled “What Bush Doesn’t Know.” Here’s the money quote:
There is still no indication that the Bush administration recognizes the utter folly of its war in Iraq, which has been like a constant spray of gasoline on the fire of global terrorism. What was required in the aftermath of Sept. 11 was an intense, laserlike focus by America and its allies on Al Qaeda-type terrorism.
That is what we needed, but that’s not what we got. Instead of a laserlike focus on the enemy, our oil-crazy leader pulled out his divining rod and zeroed in on a tyrant that happened to be sitting on the world’s second largest supply of oil. Bush and his Administration successfully scared Congress and the majority of the public (Thank you Fox News Channel! Thank you New York Times!) into believing that the only way to prevent our imminent destruction by the evil madman was to take him out immediately and secure his huge arsenal of terrifying weapons.
You know the rest. No weapons found. No nuclear weapons. No biological weapons. No capability to produce such weapons.
And all the time we’ve been busy blowing shit up in Iraq, Al Qaeda has been busy plotting more terror attacks and recruiting suicide bombers for deadly attacks on London, Egypt, and who knows where else.
And, as this article in The New York Times points out, “All is Quiet on the Home Front.”
The Bush administration’s rallying call that America is a nation at war is increasingly ringing hollow to men and women in uniform, who argue in frustration that America is not a nation at war, but a nation with only its military at war.
From bases in Iraq and across the United States to the Pentagon and the military’s war colleges, officers and enlisted personnel quietly raise a question for political leaders: if America is truly on a war footing, why is so little sacrifice asked of the nation at large?
No one, not the President or the Democrats have put forth a serious tax bill to pay for this war that has added hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt.
Everybody seems content to just sit back and watch everything go boom.
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