Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass.......So...... we'll just tell 'em we've done all we can for them and they have to step forward and be responsible to themselves now. We'll appoint a date of 'no later than' for a time that all the folks at home can know when the war will be over and we can then become an observer in the trials and tribulations of the Iraqi's as they search for their destiny. How do you suppose this will play with the Iraqi on the street in Baghdad? Will he understand how we have opened the door for greatness for him and all like him as he looks out across a country torn to pieces by the ravages of an invader who possessed all of the toys to bring down a government and defeat a country while suffering almost no casualties as a direct result of combat. Will he appreciate his freedom as the same old hatreds fester and erupt into bloodshed, unchecked by any authority strong enough to govern? Will he be able to look for a time in the future that things can rationally be expected to be any better? As we train those, of which many was a part of a military and a regime who opposed us, to take charge of their country, reasonable thinkers must wonder, what have we done or said to show them how wrong they were and how have we demonstrated that we know how to achieve peace and prosperity on their turf? When all this is done, will we be safer? Will the world's inhabitants view us with a new found respect? Can we return to anything resembling a normal way of life in these United States? There are no answers in the positive for any of the aforementioned questions. Instead, if and when we leave, all of Baghdad and the rest of Iraq will sink into the most gruesome and brutal of civil wars as the religious factions battle and jockey for control and in the end either another Saddam Hussein or a cleric will rule with an iron fist that will resemble what it was before we got there. Some other things will remain the same, Israel will keep right on killing the Muslim Palestinians and threatening everybody else in their realm. We will continue blind support no matter what the cost. Inflation will keep on marching upward at Mach speed and with no manufacturing left to establish a competitive value base, trade balances and deficit spending will erode us into collapse all the while our politicians will be telling us it ain't happening. Those living off the government will find it impossible to survive on whatever they get, and those paying will find impossible to stand the load. When the Romans fell it ushered in what we call the Dark Ages and that lasted more than 800 years before the world recovered. Some thinkers believed we've advanced technologically too much for that to happen. I don't know if I believe that or not. Either way, we've made it big enough that we and our ways will be studied for thousands of years by scholars........ if anybody's left............