Sunday, February 11, 2007

Why We need to bring Our troops home

The video link shown here will take you on a harrowing trip through Baghdad in a Humvee that constantly bumps other vehicles in traffic to move them out of the way. There are lots of ways you could critique this incident: You could blame the GIs for their rough treatment of the innocent Iraqi civilians that get in their way. You could blame the Iraqi "terrorist" insurgents for "forcing" the GIs to treat everyone as their enemy. But in reality neither party has control of this situation and they are both trying to make the best of it by surviving and/or defending their country from an occupying force.

The real responsibility needs to be put squarely into the lap of the American government that put these troops in this situation in the first place. The government that continues to claim it "spreads democracy" by putting troops on the ground in Iraq. The video shows the real result of US troops in Iraq: the continued deterioration of our relationship with the entire Middle East and the continued endangerment of our troops for no good reason.

What this video also illustrates clearly is why we need to Bring these Troops Home Now because our military presence is destroying any chance Iraq has to build a new society and the experiences we are forcing our young people to live through are taking away the chance for many of them to ever live a normal life if they survive.

The responsibility for this is now on the Bush Administration to start acting like grownups and admit they were wrong and on Congress to not sidestep their opportunity to stop this debacle by refusing to continue funding it at the cost of our childrens health and future.

No comments: