If you haven't seen it, check out this video clip of Jean Schmidt, the woman who recently just barely beat Paul Hackett, the anti-Bush Iraq War veteran, in his bid for a seat in the House. Essentially she calls John Murtha, a vet from the Korean and Vietnam wars, a coward for his proposal that the U.S. withdraw its troops from Iraq. She was shouted down by the Dems, as she should have been. We're at a point now where all the "cut-and-run" rhetoric is just plain crazy. We have to figure out the sane thing to do.
A couple of months ago I was deeply moved by the tragic story of two fathers and their ninth-grade daughters who were hiking in the Cascade mountains near Seattle. One of the girls while swimming in a river there got caught in a downcurrent near a waterfall. Her father jumped in to save her, and he was also caught in the downcurrent. The other father then jumped in, and he was caught as well. All three drowned leaving one of the girls alone on the river bank.
Does anyone reading this believe that the girl should have jumped in to try to save her father? Does anybody believe that if there were another adult there, he should have jumped in? I hope not. And yet does anybody believe that if anyone were in that poor girl's position, he would question for the rest of his life whether he should have? That's the definition of survivor's guilt. Making the sane decision, but always feeling that you made the wrong choice. It's normal human psychology in such a situation. It's not a good feeling. We'd rather not have to have it. We'd much rather a scenario in which were able to have done something actively to effect a more positive outcome. But sometimes it just isn't possilbe, and you have to face facts sanely. Thank God that girl had enough sense not to jump in to try to save her father. The rest of her family and all of her friends are so grateful that she made the sane choice.
I think that we Americans are in a position similar to anyone left standing on that river bank. We are moved by the nobility of those who have sacrificed their lives trying to do what they believed was the right thing, but there comes a point where further sacrifices are futile. We don't honor the dead by pointlessly adding to their number.
This was a war that I never supported. Once we entered Baghdad, I thought we had a responsibility to leave the place better than we found it. I never trusted the Bush administration's motives; I never believed the war's neocon architects really cared about the Iraqi people. I never thought, therefore, that they had the mentality to make a decent job of it there. This would have been an enormously difficult undertaking for even the most competent of administrations to have undertaken. But you had to hope for the best, and I did. It's clear now that the Bush people never had a chance.
Our problem is that we have the wolf by the ears. We can't hold it forever, and we can't let it go. We need help, and this administration has put itself in a position in which nobody wants to give it. His administration is neither liked nor trusted, and now it isn't even feared.This is why the sensible thing would have been to put Kerry, creep though he is, in office. He would have had at least some chance of developing a multilateral solution there–we're not the only ones who have an interest in stabilizing the region. But Bush has no chance.
We're past hoping for the best now. If there were any reasonable chance that this administration could make things better, there might be some sense in sticking it out. But if there is no chance that we can do anything but make things worse, we should get out. As long as Bush is in office, I am convinced that making things worse is the only possibility. Perhaps another administration could have had a chance, but we chose to keep Bush in office. As long as he's there, we are pointlessly sending our kids into the river to drown. I think that's all Jack Murtha is saying.
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