Imagine you’re thirteen again…

I've never tried to conceal the fact that I thought at the time that we were getting into a war with Iraq at the wrong time and with grossly inadequate justification. That having been said, we now have an obligation to the people of Iraq to leave them with a stable country where, by way of example, it is safe for young women to walk to school. Heck, I can still remember parents in Grenada in 1983 thanking us American soldiers and marines for ending the unrest there after the coup, and making it safe for their children to go to school again. iraq deserves no less of us. Which is why I'm expecting to be back here in the CENTCOM AOR several more times in the future.

April, Yes ma'am... While all of the politicians and armchair analysts dicker about whether GWB took us to war over imagined WMDs, or whatever the reason, the view from my vantage point is far simpler: We went to war to free a people. Regardless if Haliburton and other major corporations provide the infrastructure upon which the new Iraq is built, the fact remains that, once stability is restored, children will be able to attend school, grow up with their memories and "lessons learned", and eventually participate in charting the course for their country. They deserve this, and a nation as powerful as the United States was the obligation to help them make this happen. The fact that the Iraqi people are intelligent, strong-willed, and courageous, and that their security forces show every ability to take on more and more of the mission of defending their country should be the glimmer that is the light at the end of the tunnel. Our exit strategy should be simple to discern: When the Iraqis are proven to be fully capable of dealing with their own internal affairs, the coalition forces will, for the most part, fade out of the picture... (I'm probably stating the obvious in this company, but there are so many folks out there that don't seem to see that...)

One of the results of toppling Saddam after Gulf I would likely have been increasing the size of Iran by the size of Iraq. Add Saddam's then-nascent nuke program to Iran's virulent anti-US stance. Subtract the Iranian populace's current disaffection with the mullahcracy. Multiply by a secure al-Qaeda occupying terrain between Zaranj (Afghanistan) and Zahedan (Iran) with secure access to transportation nodes. The right side of that particular equation is downright scary...

Well, lessee. When I was thirteen, I was in Eighth Grade History class learning all about the Missouri Compromise, and the Compromise of 1850, etc, when the PA system came alive with the Principal's voice announcing that Jack Kennedy had just been shot. Sorta made me a history fan, ever since. As to "feculent", I had to look that up. I also looked up "cack-handed" too, recently, after seeing it mentioned at The Corner of NRO. They're both rather nasty terms, but require a bit of education to know them and use them properly, 'specially by a non-natively English-speaker. My opinion? The United States of America, or *somebody*, needs to make sure that kid can complete her education without getting blown up.