To President Bush RE: Iraq Involvement

Can you feel the excitement in the air? There is a new Secretary of Defense and the President claims to be thinking new thoughts about “strategery” on the war in Iraq, which really isn’t a war, by the way, since Congress has yet to declare war. Why should we care? After all, it isn’t as if large numbers of brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, friends and assorted acquaintances are being sent there, is it?

Perhaps we need more troops over there. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that an old idea from the first part of this pseudo war? Hey, Mr. President, how about more armored vehicles, ammo and weapons to go with those troops? Maybe we ought to start phasing more responsibilities over to the Iraqi government and armed forces. Oh, that, too, is an old idea.

It seems all these new-found ideas of our illustrious leader are really not all that new, but truly only newly found ideas by our president. Those ideas of his are the very same ones he was advised to carry out early on in this struggle. Or perhaps he just was not listening then.

We’ve lost a lot of lives over there, Mr. President, which to be fair is to be expected when we send people into an area where our troops get shot at, bombed and tortured. But shouldn’t these ideas that will minimize such tragedy have been implemented from the beginning? What is so different now? It certainly is not the impending presidential elections coming up in a couple years is it? Could the Republicans fear losing votes now that the time is near to toss the political salad and add some new ingredients from a different party? You betcha your life. Or, we betcha the lives of our loved ones.

And. Mr. President, while you are, ahem, “thinking” these grand new thoughts, how about revisiting the reasons we are there, now that you have discovered that it was faulty data that was used for your initial ideas. I certainly hope you have investigated the foundations of these wonderful new thoughts of yours, although they have been thought before by those you called un-American, even though they were merely of another party. I guess that is the new definition of un-American that is used by the administration: Un-American – Any person or policy or projection that comes from outside the glorified few who circle the President. Any proposal that does not agree with official policy is deemed traitorous. Yes, those political dissidents were certainly traitors, yet, now those new-found ideas you, sir, are thinking are the very ones voiced by those so-called traitors in the past, when your losing ideas prevailed.

So now I wonder what is next. We should definitely do something different. What we were doing was not working. I doubt we can really just drop all and drop out at this stage. That would be a diplomatic disaster that we would not easily live down on the international stage. How do we say “oops” to the families of allied troops who died based on poor leadership skills in our own oval office?

We need outside points of view to replace the tarnished points of view previously presented by our president. No, I am not advocating using the UN. I have less faith in them than I do in our current administration, if that is possible. How about NATO? Would it be feasible to make the Iraq issue a NATO issue? Unlikely, since NATO is not really pertinent to the middle east. Then what? How about we form a unified military organization made up of valid nations in the area?

Crazy idea, I’ll bet you are thinking. A military organization, let’s call it METO, Middle East Treaty Organization, made up of all the area nations, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and the other area nations, could clean up their own mess. Those are the nations in the very theater of war.

We could be the power broker, but without having our own troops there. It would never work, you say, not with Israel in the mix. Then tell me, how do you find a solution by leaving out an important facet, a key nation in the mix? Unless we find a way to do this “impossibility,” then we can either expect to leave the area a loser, or continue to sacrifice American lives needlessly.

It’s time to start thinking outside the theater, and I do not think this administration is capable of doing that..