Every fall brings us the start of school, new awful network sitcoms that will be gone before Thanksgiving, and those damn leaf-blowers. You know leaf-blowers. They’re those obnoxious shoulder cannons that blow crap all over the place, leaving someone else to come along and clean up the mess.
Just this week I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when some guy working on his lawn inadvertently blew a bunch of debris in my face. This got me thinking about how screwed up leaf-blowers are. Well, nothing encapsulates leaf-blowers like George Bush’s foreign policy. Last month, President Bush, being the strong leader he is, declared that he’ll keep our troops in Iraq so long as he’s president.
However, among the things the President failed to address during the press conference was what plan he has for the future of Iraq. Instead, he fell back on his usual rhetoric of ’emboldening the enemy,’ ‘staying the course,’ and ‘cut and run.’ He
concluded by saying that a return date for when American troops can come home will have to be determined by the next president. Again, leaf-blower foreign policy.
What’s so troubling about this inept foreign policy is that it has ravaged not one country, but two. After 9/11, President Bush, with near unanimous bipartisan support, correctly invaded Afghanistan. After the speedy toppling of the Taliban, Bush quickly diverted our troops from catching Osama Bin Laden and declared that Iraq was the central battleground… regardless of the lack of evidence, terrorists or a link to Al Qaeda. Today we are saddled with two Middle Eastern countries on the brink of chaos.
Iraq’s insurgency has subsided. Instead, they’re now in the midst of vast sectarian violence. Sunni and Shiite extremist are now waging war on each other in attempts to grab more power in the new Iraq creating what President Ibrahim al-Jafari has referred to as civil war (note: this is exactly what George Bush Sr. said would happen if Baghdad was
invaded). This is a problem that most experts concede cannot resolved with military might. Intra-country strife like this can only be solved with diplomacy.
On the other hand, Afghanistan has been successful in electing a unity government. Their road block to autonomous peace is the resurgence of the Taliban which is wreaking havoc. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that the country’s fledgling army can’t squelch the Taliban alone, they need more military aid from the United States. But once again, showing an utter disdain for diplomacy, Bush has ignored Karzai (along with most military analysts) and taken troops out of Afghanistan and sent them over to Iraq.
Clearly, this is the wrong move on both fronts.
Here’s where the Democrats come in. If Democrats want to stop hearing that they’re weak on defense they should stand up and refocus our collective attention to the one war that does need to be fought, in Afghanistan. If we continue to sit idly by, the Taliban will reclaim Afghanistan, returning it to the terrorist haven that it once was. I’m in no way advocating that we ignore Iraq, but this quagmire has deterred our focus from the real war on terror. Democrats must reframe this debate.
It is the Republicans and George Bush who have ‘Cut and Run.’ By running from Afghanistan before the job was done and haphazardly entering Iraq, President Bush galvanized Osama Bin Laden and allowed to the Taliban to flourish. Now, clearly seeing the fallout of his misguided plans, President Bush has declared that it is some other president who will have to come along and clean up the mess left by his leaf-blower foreign policy.
We’re only seven weeks away from Election Day. If you’re as sick and fed up with President Bush’s leaf-blower foreign policy as I am, on November 7, go out and vote for politicians, of any party, who are offering a real plan for getting our troops home safely as soon as possible. After all, given the courage and valor we’ve seen demonstrated by our troops time and time again, I believe they deserve a foreign policy that doesn’t blow.
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