January 30, 1968, Vietnam, Tet, a sacred holiday to Vietnamese, one that had been marked by a self imposed and unspoken agreement to temporarily cease hostilities in prior years of the war, was shattered by a massive offensive by the North Vietnamese army and their Viet Cong irregulars up and down the country. It is universally seen as the unmistaken indication that the US and the South could not win the war. The North were willing to do anything, sacrifice anything in order to win or at least deny victory to their opponents, even shatter things thought to be held sacred.
Move forward 36 years and one month. February 22nd, insurgents blow up the dome of the Askariya shrine, one of Shiite Islam's most holiest sites, home to the 10th and 11th Imams said to be direct descendants of the prophet Muhammad himself, and established in 836 by the Caliph al-Mutasim. The parallels are unmistakable. Even William F. Buckley, the conservative and Bush administration protagonist that he is, could no longer deny the truth and the title of his latest article said it all succinctly, "It didn't work", see his article here-> http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley200602241451.asp
Sure, denials by some will continue. I am sure that the rabid posters at Free Republic, http://www.freerepublic.com will compose article after article about how the war is really going swell and any indications otherwise are exaggerations of the "left wing Main Stream Media or MSM", but even they will stop believing their own issuances soon. It is all now over except for the arguments about why it didn't work and whether or not it ever could have.
The shame of it all is that if President Bush had just stopped and listened for once in his life to dissenting voices and thought, REALLY THOUGHT about what he was trying to do, this might have all been avoided. As one unnamed American solider quoted in Mr. Buckley's article said, "he can understand why a Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Shiites and Sunnis from each others throats". Many people, famous, and otherwise (like me) wrote article and article about why we thought this was not going to work, that ultimately the Iraqi people would not like us being there. If those of us without access to the intelligence resources of our country could come up with the correct analysis before the war, why couldn't those with access to these resources do this? I think the answer that will come out is that the indications were there, they simply chose to ignore them.
Congressional Democrats are uniting behind a proposal to pull our troops from Iraq as fast as is possible given attempts to keep the troops safe and avoid as much as possible creating a vacuum in their absence. All rational people on both sides of the aisle and beyond should coalesce and give input into that process. America needs to put this awful war and policy behind us as quickly as possible.
Move forward 36 years and one month. February 22nd, insurgents blow up the dome of the Askariya shrine, one of Shiite Islam's most holiest sites, home to the 10th and 11th Imams said to be direct descendants of the prophet Muhammad himself, and established in 836 by the Caliph al-Mutasim. The parallels are unmistakable. Even William F. Buckley, the conservative and Bush administration protagonist that he is, could no longer deny the truth and the title of his latest article said it all succinctly, "It didn't work", see his article here-> http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley200602241451.asp
Sure, denials by some will continue. I am sure that the rabid posters at Free Republic, http://www.freerepublic.com will compose article after article about how the war is really going swell and any indications otherwise are exaggerations of the "left wing Main Stream Media or MSM", but even they will stop believing their own issuances soon. It is all now over except for the arguments about why it didn't work and whether or not it ever could have.
The shame of it all is that if President Bush had just stopped and listened for once in his life to dissenting voices and thought, REALLY THOUGHT about what he was trying to do, this might have all been avoided. As one unnamed American solider quoted in Mr. Buckley's article said, "he can understand why a Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Shiites and Sunnis from each others throats". Many people, famous, and otherwise (like me) wrote article and article about why we thought this was not going to work, that ultimately the Iraqi people would not like us being there. If those of us without access to the intelligence resources of our country could come up with the correct analysis before the war, why couldn't those with access to these resources do this? I think the answer that will come out is that the indications were there, they simply chose to ignore them.
