Common Sense

Obviously, I’m talking about Iraq. Should we stay or should we go?

Now that Democrats have taken both houses of Congress, we can actually have a debate on the merits of what we should be doing. I’ve long been of the opinion that we never should have gone in and that we should be leaving as soon as possible. With the people we have in place, even with Gates coming in at DoD, we’ll continue to mismanage this thing.

And from all the Frontline specials, books and rhetoric I’ve heard, we’ve already lost. There was a time, a very short window, where the neocons might have pulled this off. The original plan was to go in, topple Saddam, hand over sovereignty to somebody, anybody and then pull out all but two brigades by Sept. 2003. The situation on the ground quickly deteriorated. It became obvious that we had no one to turn over sovereignty to. It couldn’t be Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, they were all exiles and were being shown to have a lot of skeletons in their closets. The US military didn’t stop any of the looting after the government fell. And the man the Pentagon had sent to oversee some of the reconstruction, on the day he arrived in Baghdad, got a call from Don Rumsefeld to effect that Jerry Bremer would be in charge.

And Bremer had absolutely zero knowledge of Middle East politics. So did all the people the administration hired to run the CPA. They were hired based on questions like “Who did you vote for in the last presidential election?” and “What are your views on Roe v. Wade?” College grads who would have been GOP campaign staffers or interns at the Heritage Foundation were sent to run Iraq instead.

Bremer made two costly errors in his first few days on the ground. His de-Baathification plan cut too deeply. Teachers who were members of the party so that they might earn some extra money and were less likely to get shot were totally blocked from having government jobs. And the disbanding of the Iraqi army. The military had been negotiating with Iraqi army commanders about getting thousands of still armed and equipped soldiers back in service with a nice paycheck from Uncle Sam when Bremer dropped that bombshell. We’re not talking about the loyal to Saddam Republican National Guard, but regular army guys who had joined to make money for their families. Bremer said ‘no, you guys stay unemployed.’

It was just a few days later that the first insurgent attack happened. An obviously well-organized insurgency.

And while Rumsfeld and the White House were denying any insurgency and posing with plastic turkeys provided by Halliburton, they remained completely ignorant of the other big problem just under the surface: Not all brown-skinned people are the same. The Shia were gaining power and the Sunnis were being blocked from negotiations and joining the new government.

So when the Sunnis attacked Shiite mosques, the Shia who had joined the army and police and were being trained by us, formed militias and death squads of the ir own to kill Sunnis. Now, the government may be so corrupt and so filled with these militias who are armed arms of the political parties, that it is too late to redeem it.

The question is really, how much do we want to contribute to the downfall of this country? If we want to keep hurting them and ourselves, we should stay. If we want to minimize our damage, we should get out now. If the reason we should stay is because we don’t want to look like we’re losing, then we’ve already lost. Staying didn’t work in Vietnam and it won’t be a good rationale in Iraq. We should leave and count ourselves lucky for not losing 50,000 American soldiers and having a civil war in our own country.

We’re there and Iraq is sliding into chaos. Staying won’t stop it from continuing to do so. The truth is, we leave and maybe Iran, in an effort not to have to deal with an unstable region halts the violence themselves. The Iranians hold way more influence than we do and any help they offer us should we stay will be conditional on us recognizing them as a nuclear power. We don’t have the apparatus to effectively negotiate with them anyway.

Others who you could actually call experts say that is the wrong move. Of course, I think my position is very reasoned and it was foreign policy experts that got us into Iraq in the first place.

Speaking of Iraq and the elections (nice segue, huh) 2008 is just a scant two years away and we’ve already got candidates and positions. First off, John McCain, who announced his exploratory committee then promptly said his plan involved more troops in Iraq. That was the fastest campaign I ever saw because that position could not possibly win. He might as well have said he plans to station Marines on the moon because it is just as feasible as a more sustained involvement in the middle east.

Inside the Democratic party, the battle for the majority leader in the next Congress has heated up to tepid! I’m in the Pelosi-Murtha corner (as if you couldn’t guess that). It was him coming out and calling for withdrawl more than a year ago that got the tide turned for the Ds in the elections. I think that’s worth a number two spot. We’ll see where that one goes in tomorrow’s vote (Chet, I hope you’re backing Murtha. I got my fingers and toes crossed).

I wasn’t just talking about Iraq with that headline. I was also talking about myself. See how clever I am? I went to my follow-up surgeon visit Monday. He was not happy (How does he think I feel? I’m the one using a cane and in constant pain). He actually used the word “pathetic” which I was a little taken aback by, but I’ve had plenty of people tell me I look pathetic.

He made two calls. One, six more weeks of physical therapy with a different therapist. I start Friday afternoon. And two, I have to go off the narcotics. After 3 and a half months, you can imagine I’m dependent on them, so I’ve been reducing my intake this week. Instead of the 8 (which is the maximum dose of Ultram 50mg) I’ve taken 5 the previous two nights. I’m going to try and take 4 tonight. I haven’t been able to fall asleep very easily since my leg hurts. I may turn out the lights at 5 am, but I don’t get exhausted enough to fall asleep until 9 or 10. It’s not really that new since the meds had been less effective lately and it was requiring more of a dosage to be able to fall asleep.

If he’s right, when I see him again on Jan. 3 I should be walking on my own with reduced pain. I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think he is right. I saw an episode of Strictly Dr. Drew the other night that seemed like a light bulb going off. The woman suffering from chronic pain described it almost exactly as I would describe my pain. The way it waxes and wanes but is always there, it was amazing. It’s not that my progress in rehab has been slow, it’s been non-existant. Surgery was 8 weeks ago Thursday, and I’m in as much pain and unable to walk the same as I was the day before surgery.

I’m giving physical therapy one more shot (3 six weeks of PT is enough, I think) before I stop this kind of treatment and look for a doctor who can treat me for chronic pain. That might mean going back to opiates, or something else like nerve blockers. On bad days, it is severe enough that walking on my own again is fast becoming secondary to reducing the pain and just being functional again. Pink Dome and Nobodygirl have both encouraged me to take a more active role in my treatment and I think that this is the path to go down. I think that the doctors I’ve had until now have been more worried about addiction that about relieving the pain and I just can’t wait much longer to do something about it.

Obviously, I’m talking about Iraq. Should we stay or should we go?

Now that Democrats have taken both houses of Congress, we can actually have a debate on the merits of what we should be doing. I’ve long been of the opinion that we never should have gone in and that we should be leaving as soon as possible. With the people we have in place, even with Gates coming in at DoD, we’ll continue to mismanage this thing.

And from all the Frontline specials, books and rhetoric I’ve heard, we’ve already lost. There was a time, a very short window, where the neocons might have pulled this off. The original plan was to go in, topple Saddam, hand over sovereignty to somebody, anybody and then pull out all but two brigades by Sept. 2003. The situation on the ground quickly deteriorated. It became obvious that we had no one to turn over sovereignty to. It couldn’t be Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, they were all exiles and were being shown to have a lot of skeletons in their closets. The US military didn’t stop any of the looting after the government fell. And the man the Pentagon had sent to oversee some of the reconstruction, on the day he arrived in Baghdad, got a call from Don Rumsefeld to effect that Jerry Bremer would be in charge.

And Bremer had absolutely zero knowledge of Middle East politics. So did all the people the administration hired to run the CPA. They were hired based on questions like “Who did you vote for in the last presidential election?” and “What are your views on Roe v. Wade?” College grads who would have been GOP campaign staffers or interns at the Heritage Foundation were sent to run Iraq instead.

Bremer made two costly errors in his first few days on the ground. His de-Baathification plan cut too deeply. Teachers who were members of the party so that they might earn some extra money and were less likely to get shot were totally blocked from having government jobs. And the disbanding of the Iraqi army. The military had been negotiating with Iraqi army commanders about getting thousands of still armed and equipped soldiers back in service with a nice paycheck from Uncle Sam when Bremer dropped that bombshell. We’re not talking about the loyal to Saddam Republican National Guard, but regular army guys who had joined to make money for their families. Bremer said ‘no, you guys stay unemployed.’

It was just a few days later that the first insurgent attack happened. An obviously well-organized insurgency.

And while Rumsfeld and the White House were denying any insurgency and posing with plastic turkeys provided by Halliburton, they remained completely ignorant of the other big problem just under the surface: Not all brown-skinned people are the same. The Shia were gaining power and the Sunnis were being blocked from negotiations and joining the new government.

So when the Sunnis attacked Shiite mosques, the Shia who had joined the army and police and were being trained by us, formed militias and death squads of the ir own to kill Sunnis. Now, the government may be so corrupt and so filled with these militias who are armed arms of the political parties, that it is too late to redeem it.

The question is really, how much do we want to contribute to the downfall of this country? If we want to keep hurting them and ourselves, we should stay. If we want to minimize our damage, we should get out now. If the reason we should stay is because we don’t want to look like we’re losing, then we’ve already lost. Staying didn’t work in Vietnam and it won’t be a good rationale in Iraq. We should leave and count ourselves lucky for not losing 50,000 American soldiers and having a civil war in our own country.

We’re there and Iraq is sliding into chaos. Staying won’t stop it from continuing to do so. The truth is, we leave and maybe Iran, in an effort not to have to deal with an unstable region halts the violence themselves. The Iranians hold way more influence than we do and any help they offer us should we stay will be conditional on us recognizing them as a nuclear power. We don’t have the apparatus to effectively negotiate with them anyway.

Others who you could actually call experts say that is the wrong move. Of course, I think my position is very reasoned and it was foreign policy experts that got us into Iraq in the first place.

Speaking of Iraq and the elections (nice segue, huh) 2008 is just a scant two years away and we’ve already got candidates and positions. First off, John McCain, who announced his exploratory committee then promptly said his plan involved more troops in Iraq. That was the fastest campaign I ever saw because that position could not possibly win. He might as well have said he plans to station Marines on the moon because it is just as feasible as a more sustained involvement in the middle east.

Inside the Democratic party, the battle for the majority leader in the next Congress has heated up to tepid! I’m in the Pelosi-Murtha corner (as if you couldn’t guess that). It was him coming out and calling for withdrawl more than a year ago that got the tide turned for the Ds in the elections. I think that’s worth a number two spot. We’ll see where that one goes in tomorrow’s vote (Chet, I hope you’re backing Murtha. I got my fingers and toes crossed).

I wasn’t just talking about Iraq with that headline. I was also talking about myself. See how clever I am? I went to my follow-up surgeon visit Monday. He was not happy (How does he think I feel? I’m the one using a cane and in constant pain). He actually used the word “pathetic” which I was a little taken aback by, but I’ve had plenty of people tell me I look pathetic.

He made two calls. One, six more weeks of physical therapy with a different therapist. I start Friday afternoon. And two, I have to go off the narcotics. After 3 and a half months, you can imagine I’m dependent on them, so I’ve been reducing my intake this week. Instead of the 8 (which is the maximum dose of Ultram 50mg) I’ve taken 5 the previous two nights. I’m going to try and take 4 tonight. I haven’t been able to fall asleep very easily since my leg hurts. I may turn out the lights at 5 am, but I don’t get exhausted enough to fall asleep until 9 or 10. It’s not really that new since the meds had been less effective lately and it was requiring more of a dosage to be able to fall asleep.

If he’s right, when I see him again on Jan. 3 I should be walking on my own with reduced pain. I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think he is right. I saw an episode of Strictly Dr. Drew the other night that seemed like a light bulb going off. The woman suffering from chronic pain described it almost exactly as I would describe my pain. The way it waxes and wanes but is always there, it was amazing. It’s not that my progress in rehab has been slow, it’s been non-existant. Surgery was 8 weeks ago Thursday, and I’m in as much pain and unable to walk the same as I was the day before surgery.

I’m giving physical therapy one more shot (3 six weeks of PT is enough, I think) before I stop this kind of treatment and look for a doctor who can treat me for chronic pain. That might mean going back to opiates, or something else like nerve blockers. On bad days, it is severe enough that walking on my own again is fast becoming secondary to reducing the pain and just being functional again. Pink Dome and Nobodygirl have both encouraged me to take a more active role in my treatment and I think that this is the path to go down. I think that the doctors I’ve had until now have been more worried about addiction that about relieving the pain and I just can’t wait much longer to do something about it.