AMEN.

I’d love to see an exit strategy offered by someone, but I haven’t seen one, yet. I want to see milestones, I want to see effort made in an honest attempt to achieve them. I’m tired of the rhetoric and the false dichotomies. (If you’re against setting a timetable that lacks intermediate goals and funding, you want to “stay the course.” If you’re in favor of setting conditions for deciding what works and what doesn’t, you’re “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”) There are times I think Dave Obey may be the only honest man on the Hill.

My default position for the next election is “anyone but the incumbent.” I need a really good reason to return one of the current crop of party-centeric apparatchiks to office, and the quality (or lack thereof) in their opposition isn’t it. If they refuse to govern then by definition they can’t be any worse than the idiots running against them. I want someone more concerned with the country than with party affiliation. Throw them all out and start over again. Repeat the process until we get someone in office who’s worthy of the job. If such a person cannot be found, we’re doomed anyway, so what does it matter?

But I can’t help but think of this kid in my class–eighteen, getting ready to enter basic. A good kid. Wants to make something of himself, be a part of something bigger than himself. Service. He’s not dumb like kerry would say, nor without prospects ( he’s a wizard at all things mechanical–cars, computers, all of it)

Great week for him. Black hooded thugs throwing shit on what he values, which is doing something for them, by the way. Now Pelosi and her hypocritical party. But yeah, all the dems support the troops. So he can pay his taxes to pay her bribes while he bakes in the Iraqi desert.

Why is it that dems think Bush is the terrorist? I just can’t get it. I try. I was a liberal too for many years. I suppose its easier to indulge in the blind rage and hate Bush rather than look at the world as it is. Its easier to believe that some American policy is really at the root of the problem and that if we would just get rid of Rove and Chaney and Bush and Rice–perhaps on some epic pyre–that the world would drift back to the quiet background and we could be safe. We would feel important too, our mission accomplished.

But here in the real world things are not so easy. The terrorists in Iraq are monsters; they kill and rape and maim; they target women and children, doctors and intellectuals. (Where is your anger?) We were warned about them by Bill and Hillary and John–all the democratic leaders. We knew they were a threat because they attacked during the Clinton Jazz Age. But Bush is the terrorist. Bush is throwing tantrums. Yeah. Lets just say: “the Iraqis can deal with it themselves”

Here in the real world the troops need supplies and only the most selfish and unpatriotic party America has ever known would engage in the type of crap we had to endure today. We all know Bush will veto the bill. We all know the dems wouldn’t dare pass it if they thought he wouldn’t. But rather than do the right thing, the house decides to encourage our enemies ( and none of us are foolish enough to believe it doesn’t) And just a few months after all the criticism of republican pork too. And the greatest benefit is that it stretches things out for just one more election cycle.

Childish… No, Bush isn’t childish. I know our minds will never meet on the subjects of war and politics. I’ll freely admit I’m more than likely closed-minded (and incoherent) but I just can’t imagine how you could be proud and smarmy about this.

What do I say to that kid in the third row? Maybe I’ll say the dems have a plan for ending the war (for a moment) and hope he doesn’t ask why they don’t want to win it. Wouldn’t that be an interesting conversation?