Saturday, October 15, 2005
[70 B.C. - Virgil, poet, born in Andes region, near Mantua]
[1844 - Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher, born in Rocken, Prussia]
[1858 - John L. Sullivan, Boxing Hall of Famer, Heavyweight champion 1881-1889, born in Roxbury, Boston]
[1881 - P.G. Wodehouse, comic novelist, born in Guildford, Surrey, England]
[1946 - Herman Goering, Nazi, dies by his own hand while under Allied death sentence]
Tails They Win, Heads We Lose
No matter what happens in today's constitutional referendum in Iraq we end up with the short straw. That Iraqis should be voting on a Constitution is indeed significant, and symbolic of movement toward a representative government. It is, however, but one early step on a perilous and uncertain journey. An insurgency rages on, and the prospect of more general internecine warfare continues. The proposed constitution is but a shell or outline, leaving unsettled most of the thorny issues that divide the various Iraqi ethnic groups.
Consider the costs: almost two thousand of our young are dead, near fifteen thousand maimed and wounded, $360 Billion spent so far. No end is in sight to this outpouring of blood and treasure. Having grossly mislead us about the reasons for invading Iraq (remember the nonexistent WMD), the President next told us that the end justifies the means (the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power). Now he sings the song of ideological struggle between the good Christian nations of the West and the bad Islamic countries of the East. That tune may have worked to launch the crusades of the middle ages, but surely we must have learned something since then.
One can only hope that an Iraqi leader emerges from this political process who is strong enough to kick us out of his country before too many more American lives are tragically lost there.
William's Whimsical Words:
The Tree of Liberty must have good soil, sunshine, and careful tending to put down strong roots; even then it may take centuries to attain full growth.
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