An anniversary and a confession

On this the four year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq it's amazing how far we've come as a nation. If the measure of our success is the overturning of a tyrannical government and its despotic leader, who'd murdered many and used WMDs against his own people, then it would have to be seen as a great success.

But if we measure it by American resolve, unity, togetherness, and the general understanding of what a free Iraq means in the global scheme of things then we're failing big time.

As a war supporter I've been called the names and such, but to be honest I believe the average American against the war is far from unpatriotic, they are just tired of all the dying and want things to go back to normal. They've seen no further attacks. Most of all, they've been unconvinced by Bush about the necessities of not leaving Iraq unfinished. It's always been a little hard to grasp what victory looks like after the Ba'ath Party hoods began their successful insurgency. Along the way and in an effort to bolster morale and not give credit to the enemy, Bush and Cheney have made horribly unsupportable statements about how things are going.

Thing is, the conventional wisdom that we've failed is becoming rooted in the culture brick by brick every day. Those supporting the surge (not giving up) are treated by some as if they have no sense. It's so bad that even a neo-liberal like Christopher Hitchens has been mocked as a "neocon" in the fever swamps without the slightest understanding of his politics.

Sites like the Huffington Post don't help. Yesterday they ran a post listing all the conventional wisdoms that illustrate the stupidity of the neocons. Nothing atypical for that bomb-throwing site (ironically, Arianna has hidden her comments section several layers off the front page to hide some of the bile from casual users) but really, how does that help?

We should all be hoping for this kind of outcome. Instead, people think a regime change here would save the day, as if the terrorists would care on iota whether or not we frogmarch Bush, Rove and Cheney out the front door of the White House. They have been and will be mortal enemies.

One among them confessed to the Cole bombing (back during the peaceful years). Walid bin-Attash was a high-level AQ player who also attended the terror summit at Kuala Lumpur in 2000 (during peacetime). Good news, right? For some. Others delve into the finger-pointing and back biting as to why we let him escape surveillance or the finer points of face-saving diplomatic protocol, and he doesn't even have a connection to Iraq.

Since it's so hard to change hearts and minds in closing I'd like to offer my own feeble thank you to the men and women who've sacrificed and served to remove the dictator through hard fighting these past four years. We can surely do better for them, both at VA hospitals and through our own wallets, but we also owe them the chance at victory in the end, lest all of those sacrifices go down the drain.