Against many warnings that invading Iraq would unleash generations of sectarian and ethnic hatreds and against all evidence that there were no WMDs, Bush chose to occupy that country and thereby endanger our soldiers. Though he touts a free election there, what has it achieved? Only the establishment of a sectarian Shiite government, with death-squads infiltrating its police and military. Not planning for this eventuality (or, rather, inevitability), Bush-Cheney assured us that we would be greeted as liberators.
And what Shiite state sits right next door to Iraq? Iran, of course, which Bush now has the gall to blame for the very conditions his false utopianism has led to. If he had any knowledge and respect of history in the Mid-east (or least surrounded himself with those who do), he might have recognized that having two troubled Shiite states side-by-side is a prescription for worse instability in the region.
What was once a tense but relatively peaceful balance-of-power between secular Iraq and Shiite Iran after their war (a war which Reagan, Rumsfeld, et al. did much to assist Saddam with militarily), no longer exists because of the present administration's stubborn determination to invade Iraq.
So now the Decider-in-chief is determined to commit over 21,000 more troops to a country that his policies have already gravely destabilized. Can we leave without Iraq imploding and the region going up in flames? Or should we stay when polls show the vast majority of Iraqis want us to leave and when the presence of our forces, regardless of past and present escalations, exacerbates the situation? This is the dilemma Bush and his advisors have saddled our nation with.
But instead of seeking military solutions, which many active and retired commanders have seriously questioned, this administration should have been, and now needs to be, striving with all its energies and the most knowledgeable advisors (rather than yes-men) for diplomatic and political resolution to the crisis in Iraq. Likewise for the granddaddy of all trouble-spots in the Mid-east: Israel and Palestine. Because this administration has done so little effectively on the diplomatic and political fronts, our nation and our standing in the world suffer immeasurably.
Bush's rigidity (packaging virtually the same ideas and practices in ever new language), his lack of knowledge (and even respect for knowledge), and his compulsive ideology (insisting only on agreement with his preconceptions) do not constitute statesmanship and never will. Although Bush fears the consequences of failure in Iraq, a statesman would have considered them with utmost care before invasion and occupation.