How Many More...?

How many more signs do we need before we see that this effort in Iraq is a failure? How many more things do we have to try there before we try the only right thing: get out?

And where are the voices of leaders who are willing to tell the truth about what we've done? Since the election and the inauguration, Bush's critics have not been as vocal as they were during the campaign. No one among the opposition can imagine that such an endorsement of poor leadership could occur. Someone has to tell the truth: the war is a crime, the torture that we've used against our prisoners is a crime, and the people responsible have to pay.

We say that crime does not pay, but what happens to that belief when leaders who commit crimes are reelected? I said in a past article that people are scared - that explains why we follow someone like Bush. But there could be more involved than that. It could be that 9/11 so hurt our national pride, that we were ready to punish anybody for it. Somebody had to pay for the World Trade Center attack, for the 3,000 lives lost there, and Hussein was the easy target. People were ready to follow someone who had the guts to go after him.

But guts don't make a man moral, and neither does Bush's profession of belief in God. His leadership is a reminder that there's no connection between religious faith and honesty. There's also no discernible connection between family background and competence. In Bush we have a leader who has politics in his blood, and a strong, supporting faith in his heart. Yet he is the most dishonest and incompetent leader we've had in my lifetime. Perhaps he's just evil, but I'm not willing to say that yet. The historians who write the history of our times will say it.

Time to sign off tonight. Send your e-mail to steveng AT TechWritePublishing.com. I'd like to print your letter in the TLJ journal.