Thaddeus Gadfly

McCain does not deserve to be president just because he has had military experience, or was a war hero. Wisdom & Judgement is a quality of greater importance than experience.

One might argue that experience garners wisdom, and it should, but not always. What is clear to me is that, in McCain, we have a man who has had direct experience with one of the collosal blunders of all time regarding US Foreign policy (outside of Iraq) and that was Vietnam. If anyone should understand and have learned from our history clearly it would be him.

But no, McCain wants us there “until we are victorious”, whatever that means.

He tells us that the surge is “working”. Or is it? Violence is down, that is evident. But simple math could have predicted that if you greatly increase our presence, violence would diminish, and, apparently it has. But one could easily assert, and I think quite correctly, that if we leave ten years from now, violence will return to previous levels, or if we leave tommorrow, violence will return to previous levels. If that is the probable outcome, why not leave sooner than later?

Therein lies the debate. The argument rises or falls on that one premise. And the premise is an assumption, i.e, the assumption that if we hang around long enough, spend a trillion bucks, go further and further into debt, Iraq will get its act together.

McCain, et al. , argue that all hell will break loose if we leave, and that if we stay long enough, Iraq will get it’s political act together. Well, they said that five years ago, they said it four years ago, they said it three years ago, and so on, and they keep telling us this, but what is becoming evident is that they, McCain, Bush, and all of the neocons, don’t have a clue.

Just as they didn’t have a clue when they got us into this grandiose and tragic quagmire in the first place.

Another point McCain raises is that we need to stay and leave when the time is right in order to protect our “honor”.

Excuse me? What honor? We zero’ed out that account with the rest of the world quite a few years. So, we are going to kill more Americans because McCain wants to cling to some vague notion of honor?

“We need to go there so they won’t come here”. He, Bush, and their ilk, say.

But, they don’t get it, they are here because we are there. We are the intruders.

If someone is intruding in your house, and you want them to leave, on what moral ground do they stand if they claim that they must stay otherwise you will “win”. What kind of bizarre and twisted logic is that?

How can anyone trust the judgement of these people?

The war is ruining our country on many levels, diverting resources that could be used at home, and it is costing lives, Americans and allies who are being needlessly killed; it is destroying the very fabric of this nation, putting it to decline. All imperialistic empires that did not cease being imperialistic vanished, and that is the path we are on, the path of “nation building”, which is euphemism for imperialism.

Obama is the only candidate who has been pure on the war. He was against it when very few politicians had the courgage to speak against it. The others candidates that did, Kucinich and Paul, they didn’t have a chance to get elected.

I don’t care what his pastor says or thinks, Obama is a great man, an eloquent man, and I will trust him and his reasons for not abandoning his pastor . After years of a President who could barely utter a compound sentence, let alone a simple sentence without uttering guffaws by the truckloads, a little eloquence would be just what the proverbial doctor ordered.

He is the right man in this juncture in history.

I predict Obama will be our next president.

But God help him, because America’s fiscal crisis seems to be getting progressively worse, and its ensuing nightmares are going to be one of the greatest challenges of this century.

A vote for McCain is a vote for a bankrupt foreign policy.