President Bush knows that Senator John McCain spoke the truth when he said “It’s the United States’ war. We’re the ones that started it. It’s our responsibility to finish it. We need more troops. We need more money. We need it quickly, and time is not on our side.”
Well, the money issue may soon prove a non-issue if Congress approves Bush’s request for an additional $87 billion to help fund the U.S. campaign in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The day after this request, made in Bush’s Sept. 7 speech updating the nation about the state of Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House admitted that it “will balloon the federal budget deficit next year by at least $50 billion — to a record $525 billion or more.”
Is it amusing, or sad, that Bush, with less than three years in the White House under his belt, has already managed to balloon to historic proportions a deficit that was non-existent at the end of the Clinton Administration? We actually had quite a large budget surplus at the beginning of 2001.
Apparently Clinton shouldn’t have left all that moolah lying around for Bush to play with. If Bush had been presented with a budget deficit, would he have been so eager to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, let alone give tax cuts to the rich twice in two years’ time?
Concerning the “war on terror,” Bush says the U.S. has exposed terrorist front groups, taken new measures to “protect the homeland,” and ended Saddam’s regime in Iraq. He concludes these points with “our coalition enforced these international demands in one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history.”
Most humane military campaign in history? How far removed from reality Bush must be to dare combine the words “humane” and “military campaign” in the same sentence, let alone have the gall to put them side-by-side.
Is it humane to invade another sovereign nation halfway around the world on the basis of a file whose contents came from a doctoral paper written 10 years ago? Is it humane to lay the basis for such an invasion on the shaky grounds of Saddam “sponsoring terror and possessing and using weapons of mass destruction?”
Where are the connections Bush was drawing in the sand and dirt and rock between the Afghan cave where Osama bin Laden hid (before U.S. and coalition troops ousted al Qaeda and lost track of him) and the now-bombed streets of Baghdad?
Bush claims that “for the Middle East and the world, there will be no going back to the days of fear — when a brutal and aggressive tyrant possessed terrible weapons.” What he fails to point out is that this “brutal and aggressive tyrant” is also missing in action, as are his “terrible weapons.” He may no longer have anyone over whom to exert his tyranny, but perhaps now more than ever we need to worry about what Saddam and his “weapons of mass destruction” are capable of doing. While one has not yet been proven to exist (beyond a reasonable doubt), the other has not yet been proven dead, either.
“Yet, we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom, and to make our own nation more secure.” I don’t feel more secure now that we have invaded another sovereign nation with no clearly discernable ties to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or weapons of mass destruction. I am more concerned now with Bush’s weapons of mass distraction, than I am with phantom chemical, biological or nuclear technology.
