Recognizing Failure is Not Un-American

This might be GOOD news. I hope so. The Democrats seem to be rallying around a plan for redeploying troops in Iraq to other areas in the region. I am concerned that the Democratic leadership is calling it a ”redeployment" and NOT a "withdrawal" is sending the wrong message. Evidently, opinion research has discovered that “withdrawal” doesn’t play well in the heartland. I am inclined to believe however, that with the majority of the country wanting us to withdraw from Iraq we should step out there and not mince words. I would think it is time to start taking the initiative. Using the word “redeployment” seems to weaken the reality of what is at stake here.

What's at stake? The consistently incompetent Bush and his minions allowed us to be attacked. They then used that attack and “cherry-picked” intelligence to invade a country that was in no way complicit in the attack. They invaded Iraq with no plan for the aftermath and we are now embroiled in a conflict that cannot be won militarily as more than one expert has indicated. We have lost 2277 men and women as of today with another nearly 17,000 wounded and there is still no plan for “victory” or to bring our children home. Because of the unmitigated disaster in Iraq, the horribly misguided and ineffective War on Terror and its allied torture and lawless imprisonments we are an international pariah. Our military is dangerously overstretched and in spite of their desire to do so cannot effectively respond to other important issues (Katrina and Iran come to mind).

We dare not lose sight of what is happening and where this country is heading and calling this a “redployment” is giving too much credit and not enough discredit to the people who brought us to this.

The message from the Democrats should be that we are the party with a plan to address Bush’s and the GOP’s disaster in Iraq. We mustn’t let the right wing spin machine continue to paint us as un-American for recognizing that Bush and his administration are a bumbling, corrupt, incompetent failures. We should not be ashamed of wanting to pick up pieces of the American dream and to do something positive about getting our asses out of this double-damned war. We should also let the American people know that there is nothing un-patriotic about recognizing a failure in Iraq and seeing that there is nothing to be gained from "staying the course" except more death and a decisive option to get our people out of harm's way is not “cutting and running”.