YOU DON'T KNOW???

Republican Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, considered to be one of the party’s leading voices on foreign policy, asked the following question in a pivotal exchange with General David H. Petraeus during yesterday's U.S. Senate Armed Forces Committee Hearings on the Surge in Iraq. How sadly ironic it is that the exchange took place on the 6th anniversary of 9/11...

"Do you feel that [the Iraq war] is making America safer"?

Pausing before responding, General Petraeus then said:

"I believe this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq."

In response to the General's non-answer, Senator Warner repeated the question:

"Does the [Iraq war] make America safer?"

General Petraeus answered, "I don't know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted in my own mind."

The Military Commander of some 160,000 courageous men and women presently risking their lives in Iraq 'doesn't know' and has not yet 'sorted out in his mind' if those troops' sacrifices are making America safer. He does say he anticipates bringing 30,000 troops home by next summer. The problem is - that will still leave 130,000 soldiers deployed in Iraq... the same number present there prior to the recently mounted "Surge".

I applaud General Petraeus for at least this measure of honesty, even though I'm sickened by the proposal that, 4 and a half YEARS into this war, he 'does not know' if the bleeding and dying our Military men and women are doing in Iraq has made America any more secure. Considering his supreme position of leadership in the fray, one would think that if he felt the war was making things ANY safer for America, he would had answered in the solidly affirmative. Given that same position, held even as he becomes ever more a mouthpiece for President Bush, the General's assertion that he 'does not know' if the Iraq War has rendered America safer leads me to believe that he is, at the very least, entertaining serious doubts. And I suspect that, in light of the great deal of time the U.S. spent in bed with Saddam Hussein before eventually turning against him and bringing about his demise, PLUS the undeniable fact that Iraq had no WMD's and nothing to do with 9/11... the draining of our troops and coffers into the sucking vortex that is the War in Iraq, coupled with our apparent inability to capture or otherwise eradicate Osama Bin Laden, has rendered America perilously anemic on many dangerous fronts. Not to mention infinitely MORE vulnerable to further attacks. Meanwhile, Iraq is quagmired in a bloody civil war that now counts among its victims some 789 more American Heroes than total number of people lost in the 9/11 attack... while being governed by a half-hearted Iraqi Parliament more concerned with their 30-day recess last month than with the fact that their country is burning while they fiddle.

I wholly agree with the commentary on General Petraeus' above cited testimony set forth by Andrew Sullivan in his 9/11/07 "Daily Dish" Blog entry:

"He's [General Petraeus] fighting a war that he hasn't even decided is vital or even beneficial to the security of the United States. That's how lost we are in mission creep. That's the depth of the hole in which Petraeus has been ordered to keep digging."

And from the same session of yesterday's Armed Forces Committe hearings on the Surge Strategy in Iraq comes another frightening issue to contemplate:

* "Most importantly of all, even the men charged with implementing the surge policy had to concede that it had failed to bring Iraq any closer to political reconciliation. Instead, [Ambassador Ryan Crocker's] effort to address the situation involved diving into a bewildering set of more-or-less trivial indicators, including such milestones as the holding of an auction of Iraqi cell phone spectrum." *

* Source:

http://story.malaysiasun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/281280/cs/1/...

Osama Bin Laden is alive and well and plotting with his merry band of killers to hit America, among others, yet again. Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Syria are hotbeds for Al-Quiada, and like a metastasising cancer, Al-Quiada's cells are spreading to major countries throughout the world. Our Iraq War military personnel are now serving two and three back-to-back, mandatory combat tours... with ever shrinking "down time" granted in between. Cuba is in a state of flux, and Russia and North Korea are question marks, armed to the teeth with nuclear weaponry. All that any of them will have to do, should they decide to set their sights on the U.S., is wait for us to reach critical mass ~ militarily AND economically spread perilously thin.

We have only so much in the way of military/quasi-miltary/civilian battle support personnel and economic resources, "Greatest Nation in the World" or not. We cannot afford to squander our troops' precious lives and limbs on the altar of our President's "pet peeve" - a bloody conflict foundational upon a pack of lies, into which he has nevertheless thrust our heroic military men and women.

This is not the time for political name-calling and mud-slinging, nor is it a time for cowardice born of political agendas on the part of our elected officials. Our soldiers are Republicans AND Democrats... and they all bleed red. To say we support them while chosing to ignore General Pataeus' and Ambassador Crocker's uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of their sacrifice in rendering America safer is to undermine them in the bitterest of ways. Our first duty in supporting these courageous men and women is refusing to continue sending them into battles that will not ultimately render their homeland more secure... and to bring them home when we, via persistence in remaining factually informed and politically unbiased, discover that this is the case.