A * BIG * WASTE

Again, it would be so easy, what with all the rhetoric, lies, and proganda that invade our daily lives, newspapers, and airwaves to forget the “good old days” of innocence and false security before we started erasing civil liberties. Remember those days? First change not long after 911 was seeing airports staffed with rifle-toting soldiers--shouldn't we have seen it coming? Now when you fly, the airports are still full of soldiers, the difference is they are battered and scarred both physically and emotionally. Or they are tear-stained from good-byes, all much too young either way. The losses continue to mount, 2,974 at the WTC and 3,537 in combat, this leaves us approaching 7,000 lost lives, hopes, dreams, and promises for a better world if maybe these people were still in it. And the question still beckons. Are we any safer, more respected, closer to catching the "real" terrorist? Sadly, it doesn't appear so.

But as I drove to work today I was thinking. Six years ago I was rushing to dress, gather Sophia for pre-school, and get to a real estate closing after a quick stop to drop Sophia at day care. As I frantically got ready while sipping my coffee I flicked on the TV. In a moments time I was to witness something so horribly tragic, and so humanly sad, that I’m sure like my parents’ generation remembered where they were for the assassination of JFK, I too would forever remember the morning of September 11th, 2001. I stood, slack jawed in my kitchen, and watched as the second tower was hit and broadcast live on network television.

In an instant everything changed. Almost in a fog, and hugging her even more that day, I dropped Sophia at the daycare, hustling over to meet my clients for their closing, all the while tuned to the radio—any station really. There was no music that day, only live feeds from New York as bewildered journalists tried to make some sort of sense out of hell the day had become. I knew as did millions of Americans that this was to change our lives, our history, and our view of our place in the world forever.

Gone now are six years, and what an incredible mess we have on our hands. A bunch of white middle-aged men, none of whom had any military background bumbling through history altering decisions. Clearly we have been led by a cadre of self-serving bureaucratic liars calling the shots, trampling on our constitutional rights, and generally making the world even more dangerous and volatile in the process. Afghanistan was accepted as something that had to be done, and even the meekest of Presidents would have had to decapitate the Taliban leadership. I needn’t go into the incredibly wasteful and fool hardy decisions that we as a nation have allowed Bush and Co. to make and lead us into since then. George has played this nation and its assets as if it were his personal little game to play, however he saw fit.

With so many factors pointing to failure, it appears now that this debacle was doomed from the very start. Having mentioned that the executive leadership of this administration was a non-military serving one, especially during Vietnam, I should clarify myself. I do no find it a requirement to have served in the armed forces to be considered qualified to make decisions regarding the deployment of our soldiers destined for combat. I do, with regard to the matter of protesting or supporting the validity of American soldiers’ sacrifice in combat, find it a far more credible argument of one who has served in the armed forces; especially in combat, when arguing for either the continued deployment or withdrawal of said troops from harms way. Who knows better than someone who has faced death?

After witnessing Representative Murtha’s treatment by this administration with regard to his beliefs that we should bring our troops home, it only underscores this administrations’ willingness to muddy anyone’s name who would dare take a stand against its failed policies. Even a decorated combat Marine, something no one on the executive branch of this administration is. Implying he is less a patriot for this view, yet Bush's minions outed an undercover agent of the CIA. So who's the real patriot here?

So here we are. Not gaining any ground in Afghanistan, and bogged down in a bloody civil/religious/ethnic war in Iraq and surely no safer in the world than we were six years ago. On the contrary, we are as a nation even more despised and ridiculed than ever, and probably even more at risk now as a people than we've ever been at any time in our nation’s history. Having been to Europe this summer, most people are incredulous how we could reelect such an inept, and fundamentally flawed man again. Now we have the double indignity of the administration using combat veterans when it’s convenient with regard to the new propaganda commercials extolling the wisdom and virtues of our failed policies and doctrines, while imploring us to commit more young lives to the slaughter.

There are others still, all maligned for their opposition; McCain, Kerry, Murtha: these men were all viciously attacked in ads and propaganda during both elections and key votes of Congress, despite all of them being combat experienced statesmen, men who have seen blood spilled in vain as well. Instead, the shameless Bush administration has no conscience when parading double amputees, widows, and parents of killed soldiers to propagandize this mess we call a war.

Even with six years gone we're not an inch safer, nor a pound better than we were before George started this mess. Instead we've allowed our "Commander in Chief" to lose 3,537 more lives since 911, and Bin Laden? Well, incredibly, he's still alive and lives on to torment his enemies-- George and Co. It's been said that the "devil is in the details", in this case it would seem that he's also found in the lack thereof, since the "details" of this mess have never been true anyway, nor have they added up to much more than lies. Further proof of a flawed and undefined mission, misguided policies, and fuzzy objectives in righting the many wrongs of that innocently peaceful day six years ago.