A bilious old soldier had this letter in the Strib today:
I was amazed at the poor showing of war protesters at the Lake Street Bridge on March 19, the fifth anniversary of that war's start. As I walked the bridge in my personal counterprotest, carrying my "Liberate Iraq -- Support Our Troops" lawn sign, one of the 30,000 we printed and gave away in 2003, I heard media and police estimate the crowd between 600 and 800 people. It struck me that in a metropolitan area of nearly 3 million people, this was a very small crowd to show up when the weather was so mild.
It becomes more obvious each day that the people of Minnesota realize that the change in strategy and tactics by the "surge" are now working. Even the mainstream media, which many accused for so long of slanting the news to the negative, are now reporting the success of both the military and political advances in Iraq.
No matter how you feel about the events that took us to war, we are there and must succeed. We are faced with an election this year that will decide whether the Iraqi people will actually succeed in their efforts to build a safe and secure nation. An independent democracy in Iraq is in the best national interest of America. We as a nation have sacrificed too much to turn tail and run away. [italics are Spot's]
JOE REPYA, EAGAN
Joe, those 30,000 signs you had printed up? Spot hasn't seen a single one for a long time.
Even Gen. David Petraeus, the surgemeister, says that there is no military solution to Iraq. And Joe, your boy Dave has also said that nobody thinks adequate progress is being made on a political solution, either.
What color are you eyes, Joe? Spot bets they are brown.
Joe's remarks about sacrifice as a nation is insulting to families who have lost a service member, or service personnel who are now saddled with lifetime disabilities. The Administration has done everything to avert national sacrifice, whether it be by taxation, or even looking at rows of the caskets of the KIA. But whatever the sacrifices were, and by whom, is irrelevant to decisions about staying in Iraq. Those sacrifices, to use the clinical terms of economics, are sunk costs. That cannot be recovered regardless of what we do. Here's a quote that was in an earlier post by Spot, too:
Some economists who track the war expenses say they worry that politicians are making mistakes similar to those made in 2002, by failing to fully come to grips with the short- and long-term financial costs.
“The relevant question now is: what do we do now going forward? Because we can’t do anything about the costs that have already happened,” said Scott Wallsten, an economist and vice president of research with iGrowthGlobal, a Washington research institute. “We still don’t hear people talking about that.”
But the chickens, and the chicken hawks, too, are coming home to roost. Surging oil prices and the collapse of the dollar are directly related to the credit card war. If you want to jump off a cliff, Joe, be my guest, but don't take the rest of us with you.
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