Looking for a lost war...

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, and Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, from San Francisco, had a little sit down with our petulant prince, George W. Bush, and Harry told Georgie that the Iraq war was lost.

Now the whole histrionic chorus of right-wingnut gas bags are all hyperventilating about how Senator Reid, saying out loud what everyone already knows, is both treasonous and undermining the 'morale' of the troops.

I'm not going to bother to discount this pile of road apples because you either know it for what it is and acknowledge it, or you go back to the kool-aid bowl and draw yourself another draft.

Instead I'm going to break ranks with the 'liberals' and say that the Senator and the Representative were wrong. America has a mighty military machine and it's damn near unbeatable (although GWB and his cronies are doing everything in their power to defeat, destroy, and dismember America's military might, purely for personal profit, but that's another tale).

Let's look at Senator Harry Reid's claim for a minute...
...but before we get all breathless with our little lace panties all bunched up like Bill O'Reilly's, we need to look up two simple, everyday words on Dictionary.com.
WAR and PEACE have many nuances but we just need to cover the basic definitions:

WAR
1. A conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations.
2. A state or period of armed hostility or active military operations.
3. Aggressive business conflict.
4. Armed fighting.
[Origin: bef. 1150; (n.) ME, late OE werre < ONF < Gmc; c. OHG werra strife; (v.) ME, late OE werrien (transit.) to make war upon, deriv. of the n.; cf. OF guerrer, ONF werreier; akin to war]

PEACE
1. An agreement or treaty between warring or antagonistic nations, groups, etc., to end hostilities and abstain from further fighting or antagonism.
2. A state of mutual harmony between people or groups.
3. The normal freedom from civil commotion and violence of a community; public order and security.
4. A state of tranquility or serenity.
[Origin: 1125–75; ME pes < OF, var. of pais < L pax (s. pāc-); akin to pact]

Before we make any grand pronouncements about whether or now we won or lost the WAR, there's another important question we must answer. Who are we at WAR with?
al Qaeda?
Saddam Hussein?
The Iraqi people?

If we are at WAR with al Qaeda, then the WAR is still going strong but we're going to lose it because we're fighting in the wrong place. Either we should be blowing up and bombing Pakistan, where Osama bin Ladin, the nominal head of al Qaeda is living; or we should be blowing up and bombing Saudi Arabia, where bin Ladin came from, where most of al Qaeda's followers and leaders came from (as well as 11 of the 19 hijackers responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001), and where all of al Qaeda's funding still comes from.

We can't win a war against al Qaeda in Iraq, because that's not al Qaeda's homeland. We might as well bombing Mexico for all the good it's going to do, not that I'm suggesting that!

So what are the other possibilities?
If we are at WAR with Saddam Hussein, we won.
He's dead.
His kids are dead, too.
Most of his family is dead.
We did that!
Whoopie! We won the WAR!!!
War is over, man. Let's get the troops and go home now.

But maybe it wasn't al Qaeda or Sadaam we were at WAR with. Is there any chance we are at WAR with the Iraqi people? It sure looks like it 'cause they're doing most of the dying. But if that's the case then someone in the White House has got a whole lot of 'splaining to do, 'cause the Iraq people didn't do anything to us. Besides, we've been told a million times or two that we're liberating Iraq! If liberating Iraq means winning the war, we won. Iraq has been liberated. The WAR is over, let's get the troops home, now. If we're at WAR with the Iraqi people, heaven forbid, then we should just bomb Iraq further back into the stone age, quickly, rather than slowly as we're currently doing. It's not right. It's not moral. It's wrong on every level but, WAR is HELL and they are the enemy.

On the other hand, anyone who is not comatose (or listening to Fox media) can clearly see that it was not ever the WAR that we lost, but the PEACE.
We lost the PEACE.
But the peace can best be won by ending the WAR.
Now.
In either and any case, it's time for the American people to do the right thing -- for the troops, for the Iraqi, for our standing in the world, and for very our souls.
It's time to bring the troops home, war won or not.


P.S., Ms Maureen Dowd, the dyed and blow-dried up old prune, needs to get herself a new photograph that shows her as she really is, That dowdy old hag hasn't looked young in at least 15 years ...and she has the temerity to mewl about John Edwards' vanity!