Herbert: Heads in the Sand (Rips * & RNC Lies)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/opinion/03herbert.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

When asked this week on CNN how long the U.S. military is likely to remain in Iraq, Senator John McCain replied "probably" 10 or 20 years. "That's not so bad," he said, adding, "We've been in Korea for 50 years. We've been in West Germany for 50 years."

Reporters have come to expect candor from Senator McCain, and in this case he didn't disappoint. But there weren't any speakers mounting the podium at the Republican National Convention to hammer home the message that G.I.'s would be in Iraq for a decade or two.

That's not the understanding most Americans had when this wretched war was sold to them, and it's not the view most Americans hold now.

If Senator McCain is correct (and the belief in official Washington is that he is), then boys and girls who are 5 or 10 years old now will get their chance in 2015 or 2020 to strap on the Kevlar and engage the Iraqi "insurgents" who, like the indigenous forces we fought in Vietnam, will never accept the occupation of their country by America.

Marcina Hale, a protester who came to New York this week from suburban Westport, Conn., said she has two teenage boys and that Iraq "is not a war that I'm willing to send my sons to." As the years pass and the casualties mount, that sentiment will only grow.

[acmavm]

1. Great editorial from Bob Herbert, as always. Funny isn't it, the repubs

idolize the great McCain, but they don't hear anything he says unless it's Kerry bashing. He admits that twenty years in Iraq sounds about right, comparing it to the 50 in Germany and Japan. What an asshole. The big difference is that the twenty in Iraq will be spent with people shooting and bombing our troops. And I always have a hard time trying to figure out how they think we're occupying either nation. Maybe at the begining, right after the war and for a few years beyond that. But I seriously don't think that the fact that we have troops in either place means that we are pulling any strings in either nation. We are there simply because they allow it.

Why in the hell is the American public so incapable of rational, linear thought patterns? Well not all Americans, but far too many.

[necso]

2. Great stuff.

"Any serious person who looked around the world this week would have to wonder what the delegates at the G.O.P. convention were so happy about."

Not only true, but hilarious!