Quote:
Originally posted by Superman
"Americans must certainly be gullible if a Harvard-and-Yale educated son of a billionnaire oil baron who sat out the Viet Nam war in the National Guard can be sold to the public as a regular joe." I thought that was interesting.
|
Absolutely. That is, however, what we are stuck with at that level. Anyone that rises to that level of power in our country is a child of priveledge and wealth. We have not had a "regular Joe" in the Oval Office in my lifetime, or my parents' lifetimes either. That's no longer possible with what it costs monitarily or politically to launch a campaign for that office today. As far as our current resident of that hallowed office, if he is to be labeled a liar, incompetent, or whatever else over this issue, we must include his predecessor and a very large number of not only our leaders, but others from around the world. I'm sure he was acting upon the best information he had available at the time. That it turned out to be a bigger can of worms than he realized going in is something we have the luxury of pointing out through hindsight, and a fine mess it is. Looking at our options after having opened that can, I'm not sure we could have done anything different that what we are doing - riding it out to the end. Hopefully when the dust settles over there, all those American lives will mean something. The track record in that area of the world is historically not very good, and I would not be surprised to see it settle back into their traditional infighting based on tribal and religious differences. It bothers me to think this, but unfortunately I truly believe there are those in this country that would like nothing better, just so they can say "we told you so", and add to their "Bush is an idiot and it's all his fault" rhetoric. There are a lot of good peoples' futures at stake over there. Unfortunately, it seems to boil down to a partisian political debate here at home, with those futures some abstract idea that seems to be left out. Too many here are more interested in winning that political debate than they are in those peoples' futures.