What A Mess

09/28/2006

Paul Munnis

The flap over the anti-terrorism legislation is masking the fact that Afghanistan and Iraq are both down the toilet. We have lost those two campaigns and Bush is trying to delay the delivery of the bad news until after our mid-term election.

In Pakistan, the government is providing a hide-out for the Taliban and Bin Laden. From Pakistan the Taliban launches offensive attacks and trains soldiers to fight against American and NATO troops. Asked why there is no attack on these positions the Bush reply is that we can’t find them, a huge admission of an intelligence failure of major proportions. All the while Afghanistan is supplying the bulk of the world market demand for opium and the opium growers are protected.

The president of Pakistan is here to sell his new book and the president of Afghanistan is here to get more money from Bush. They are opposed to one another and are political enemies. Bush is trying to reconcile them to permit a territorial free consideration and an offensive against the Taliban. What prevents it is the fact that America has not won the hearts and minds of the citizens of both nations and thus the rulers cannot face their own citizens with confidence.

This follows a debacle at the UN where Iran and its allies bashed Bush and America soundly with anti-American sentiment turning it into a international farce. Bush and his Administration couldn’t control the events showing the weak grip that they have on foreign policy and their lack of influence and leadership around the world. 

In Iraq, Civil War is now rampant. Sixty-percent of the Iraqis say they should kill Americans and chase us out of Iraq. Clearly the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a lost war. That dooms our military to a never-ending campaign. Bush has no initiatives going that promise to win the hearts and the minds of the Iraqi’s.

The UNITY government is a total failure and seeks to ally itself with Hamas. Our citizens are against the war in Iraq as it is being waged and a majority of citizens want major change in the conduct of the war. A coalition of Republicans and Democrats is emerging that opposes the continuation of the war as it now stands. Our mid-term election is turned into a plebiscite on the war(s) and their conduct.

American foreign policy is a complete failure and little effective diplomacy of value is operational. What little we do have going for us in foreign policy is being conducted by foreign nations in the UN to deal with Iran and North Korea.

Bush has responded by threatening more War even though our American Armed Forces have insufficient troops for the present job much less an expanded role in the mid-east. This is making many expect an imminent military draft.

Against this background our citizens are concerned about flawed voting systems that could rob us of our vote when our November election comes around. When we meditate on how this came about as a result of cronyism and privileged contracts we get angry at Congress for their lack of oversight and then realize the many other areas of or government are not being supervised by Congress.

More concern arises over the security of our nation as the GOP rushes to plaster over a flawed administration of Homeland Security with open borders even as they attack Democrats as being soft on security. Nobody is feeling safe from another attack against America these days. The only security that Bush is offering to America is what Democrats shame him into providing and then its done in a flawed manner as in the case of the Immigration Act.

What a mess.