The Wrong Question

All the hearings with Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeous are asking the wrong questions. In my opinion, the questions that should be asked are: Is making apologies for the ill-planned, impulsive, subjective decisions made by this administration worth the lives of all Americans?

It is not just present lives of those in armed services that are being lost. Our domestic budget has been shaved back so far that our children are being poorly educated; often medically abandoned; and we will be paying off a national debt far beyond the abilities of a generation or two. The infrastructure of our nation has been sorely compromised by lack of Federal funding. Our roads, bridges, public transportation, public buildings and other aspects of our physical and public safety are far below the standard we had been led to believe would be handled by the taxes being extracted from the middle and poor classes by our government.

The current hearings reveal that, in the opinion of the BBC, “Now, both Gen Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker clearly feel that it is their duty to make the policy (of the surge) work.” Further, BBC writes, “No-one, either in Washington or in Iraq, believes the Americans will be there to stay indefinitely, in large enough numbers to affect the eventual outcome of the civil war.”

American lives are being saved when forces are provided with phenomenally expensive Humvees. However, while it is important to save American lives, arming them with more expensive vehicles is not the single alternative. Getting them out of Iraq can be more effective. Further in the BBC article today, “Gen Petraeus himself has said that the average counter-insurgency campaign takes about nine years.” If we follow that path, I submit, we will have slipped further down in world status of infant mortality, literacy of our youth, social programs to lower crime, and all the many formerly funded programs that made us a leader in the world. We will be further open to terrorist attacks here, lacking in funding for security of our imports, borders, and holding back from illegal arrivals who are not here to further our cause for freedom and democracy.