Caught between Iraq and a hard place

I don’t much like to talk about politics in public, as I feel like once you say anything at all, somebody out there will disagree with you, and further, you have absolute no way of making amends with them short of saying “forget it.” If you argue your case, then the rift between you and the other person grows until you are adversaries. If you ponder the issue a little, you might decide that you are wrong and amend your views. But then the opposing side will probably call you wishy-washy, and those folks with whom you formerly agreed suddenly have their sights on you.

For example, if I make any statement on abortion at all, somebody out there will hate me. Indeed, either way, about half of the American people would think I was a horrible horrible human being, either because I hate women, or because I hate babies. For the record, I neither hate women nor babies; I think they both go very well with cereal. Regardless, I simply cannot win. My stance on some key issue would become a definitive way of labeling me. With us, or against us. Reasonable (because I agree with you), or idiot (because I don’t). Where might I put my humanity in all of this, so that I might be looked in the eye and spoken to as an equal, rather than being demonized by somebody as some horrific version of myself?

Bush has clearly made some mistakes, and most of my friends are very liberal, so they tell me so all the time. Usually, I find myself agreeing with them on those points, and yet I cringe when I hear them throw around terms like “monkey” or “idiot” or any other number of names to try to demonize the man; I cannot join in a purportedly intelligent conversation when people can’t even acknowledge the human-ness of the subject. He’s a man, given responsibility in these past six years greater than most folks will carry in their entire lives. Some people excel with that responsibility while others make grave errors. If those errors are made, they aren’t demonic or sub-human, they’re oh-so-very human. If these mistakes do mean the needless loss of lives around the world, there are far more important things to do than to transform the tragic man at their core into something sub-human.

So maybe that’s why tonight when I listened to the State of the Union address and then to the responses from both parties, all I could imagine was how trapped the President must have felt at that moment. Okay, he’s made his mistakes. Fine. Now, if you were in his shoes, what amends could you possibily make that would make up for them?

He made a call to cut gasoline consumption in the United States drastically over the next decade while increasing the usage of renewable fuels. He’s a Republican, so of course he couched it in talk of reducing dependency on rogue nations and evil terrorists and whatnot, but come on, this is a big step for him! The Democratic response was basically “too little too late.”

Furthermore, Bush wants to send more troops to Iraq to try to control the situation a little better. In what will probably be my only public opinion on the matter, I think it’s better than the status quo. Right now, the troop shortage is a huge tactical problem and it means that the soldiers are spread too thin with too few resources. If we’re not going to take them out, which we can’t do all at once, then we have to bolster their forces simply to help them survive. They’re fighting a war, and whether you like war or not, you have to do what’s best in wartime.

The troops need to survive, and they need help to do that.

The Democratic response focused completely on opinions of the war and not the truth of the war. Knock knock, it’s happening right now, and I don’t give a damn whether you support it or not, because it’s too late for that crap. The Democrats should have voiced their displeasure a little more loudly at the start, when they were too busy joining the Republicans in a “give away our American rights” party (I realize they didn’t have the majority, but we all remember the eagerness to be “bi-partisan” after 9/11). Here’s an excerpt from Senator Jim Webb, Virginia:

The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought; nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction. Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift toward strong regionally based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq’s cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq. (Transcript here)

Um what? Did he even really say anything? We know nobody likes the war, and we know we can’t immediately extract the troops. So yeah, his solution: a formula. Thanks, Senator Webb.

I’m not trying to be critical of the Democrats just for the sake of it; what I mean to show is that no matter what Bush does, there will be people to criticize him just for the sake of being critical. And I assure you, it’s not just the Democrats either, because the Republicans also had a few words.

In a rather progressive move, Bush announced a temporary immigrant worker program. Stepping away from the great wall of Mexico fiasco, Bush is displaying some surprisingly forward thinking. This however, drew the ire of the Republican party, who were “disappointed but not surprised that the president has once again chosen to trot out this same old pig, albeit one with a slightly new shade of lipstick,” in the eloquent words of Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado. The Republican party and pigs…I’ll never understand it.

CNN.com stuck with the “Work with me” idea in summarizing the Address, and it’s an important point. He’s not just a lame duck trying to matter, he’s a desperate lame duck trying to matter. Desperate to please, desperate to have the approval of the American people again, desperate to not leave a mark on history as the idiot who messed everything up. I don’t subscribe to all the “America should stand united” and “dissent is unpatriotic” nonsense, but before joining in the chorus of empty criticisms, ask yourself first if they actually offer ways to improve the political situation, or are they just part of an impetus to label Bush as either a monster, idiot, or simian?

Finally, I don’t always agree with the man, but in the end, he is a man, trying to do what he thinks is right and making decisions that affect other men and women all around the world. I wouldn’t wish those decisions on anyone, let alone the aftermath of having made the wrong ones.

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 : Politics : 2 Comments

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