Photo Source: Clipart.com

Here we are, back to wondering about the government and their motives for doing things. Some people have made a hobby of watching politics and even others have refined this hobby to look for every little misstep by those in power. As far as I am concerned, this is going a little to far. While I am interested in the track that is taken by those in power over us, I am not interested in the tragedy of the first lady going to a party where four other women are wearing the same dress, yet things like this sometimes dominate the news. Why is this so important to people? I have asked myself this question a few times and I always seem to come up with the same answer. The answer is that this president is so hated by some of the public that every little thing that goes wrong with him and his administration is relished by many of us.

I am not a fan of the current administration and that is putting it lightly. I am totally against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I feel the frustration that is felt by many of us, as the president keeps putting forward his troop increase plans. I am tired of hearing that this is going to solve our problems over there when we all know it won't. Today, February 14, 2007, the president went on tv and stated that there are people that are not willing to give his plan a chance. I would say that when you look at the list of the dead and the results that have been achieved in Iraq, you can only come to one conclusion. The only way to stop the violence in that country is if they find a strong Tito like leader. I have often said that Yugoslavia was a lot like Iraq with it's factions that fell apart after Tito's death. Tito ruled with a strong hand, Saddam ruled with the threat of death. Making up stories to try and justify our presence in that country was a despicable act.

I am beginning to hear those same types of stories again, this time concerning Iran. What I saw on the news the other day was incredible, there was Tony Snow, the president's press secretary stating that these stories were true, while everyone else that was interviewed about them begged off saying that they had no info. The stories concerned the Iranian government and they stated that the government was supplying munitions to the insurgents in Iraq. Just because you find a weapon from a particular country in Iraq, does that mean that the government of the country that manufactured that weapon is supplying them? Of course it doesn't. I wonder how many American weapons are being used against us? What about weapons manufactured in allied countries, does that mean that the governments of these countries are supplying the weapons? Arms dealing is a big business. There have been shipments of weapons going into Iraq that were manufactured in many different countries. I think that the public is getting tired of this type of story and it is beginning to remind us of the boy who cried wolf. The boy kept crying wolf to get attention and then when the wolf really attacked, no one believed him. Even the new Secretary of Defense denied knowledge of the Iranian government sending arms to Iraq, how does this make the president look?

People are impatient with this government. Just look at the last Congressional elections. Only 1/3 of the senate was up for elections, yet people expect huge changes. There definitely is a difference now in the Senate and House, but it will take at least one more election to get that overwhelming majority to really make changes. Sure there is a majority now, but it is so slight that at times it is ineffective, depending on the issue. There is a small, but vocal, minority calling out impeachment phrases. I don't think that we will see that. I am not weighing in on this one way or the other, I am just saying that I don't see this happening. The president is owed too much by some of these lawmakers, after all, he has made some of them very rich with some of the laws he has passed and there are an awful lot of lawmakers in his party that owe him big time and who's terrible secrets he knows about.

So what should we do about Iraq? First of all we should have known that the country would fall apart if we removed the government there, what kind of intelligence do we have anyway? Well it is too late to worry about that now. We have to face the problem, there are different ethnic and religious factions that hate each other. Add to this other countries that would like to spread their beliefs to this area and you have one heck of a mess. I believe that the U.S. is too hated in this region to ever convince anyone that it is sincere even if it is. This means that someone else would have to negotiations the peace and it would have to be someone that is not suspected of being a U.S. puppet. One solution might be to have a country like Switzerland negotiate a partition where Iraq is broken up into three individual countries. This would separate the two religious factions and give the Kurds their own country. This would be something like the India and Pakistan solution. Turkey doesn't want this because they are always fighting with the Kurds and this would give them a country on the border of Turkey and Turkey is our ally. Another solution might be for Iran to take in all the Shiites. This is not practical and these people don't want to leave their country. One has to remember that the Iranians are not Arabs, but most of the Iraqis are, except for the Kurds that make up about 16 percent of Iraq. So is there an answer to this mess?

I think that one of the things that has to be done first is seal the borders until the country is stabilized. One of the geniuses in the administration suggested sealing them for 72 hours. Once the borders are sealed then we pull the troops back and allow the Iraqis to settle this mess. If our armies are attacked we deal with the attackers. We have to remember that the more we fight, the more enemies we make, because we kill and injure innocent people along with the guilty. This can not be helped in wartime. Sealing the borders will eventually dry up the foreign forces and foreign munitions. If we create a no man's land between the border and also on the other side of our position that is sufficiently large enough, our troops would be a lot safer and could still move out if necessary. Sure this plan might take a few years to work, but eventually someone would emerge as the power in the country, unless the country collapses into tribal regions. It may not be the best plan, but at least it is a plan that accomplishes several things, it seals the border which in turn prevents foreign fighters and ammo from entering Iraq, it places the responsibility for the recovery of the country in the hands of the Iraqis and it protects our troops that are there.

Once it is decided who is going to rule Iraq, we can help them rebuild, if that is what we really want to do, we haven't done much of that yet, which has created even more enemies. There is one more thing that I would like to say, we now have to watch out for Afghanistan, there are things going on there that are not making the general news and it could still turn into another Iraq.