Freedom's Darker Side

I'm all for people voting as a means of proving their God-given liberty, really I am, but this is getting ridiculous.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Eleven Iraqis and one U.S. Marine were killed Thursday as insurgents clashed with U.S. troops and blew up a school slated to serve as a polling center — pre-election violence that followed the deadliest day for U.S. troops since the war's start. Another U.S. soldier died in an accident.

The Marine was killed and five others were injured when insurgents launched mortars at their base near Iskandariyah, about 30 miles south of Baghdad.

In the capital, U.S. and Iraqi troops clashed with insurgents on Haifa street in the center of the city, witnesses reported.

What do you get when you have a shallow, incurious, rigid, moralistic tough-guy rube for President? Someone who thinks he understands all of human nature, even those people he has never gotten to know, let alone met. Someone willing to make decisions despite lacking a depth of knowledge or understanding of what you are doing and where you are going. Someone willing to risk lives, thousands of lives, for lofty hopes and dreams without the vaguest notion of the consequences or possibilities of the ill-informed decision.


It isn't the pursuit of democracy itself that is a problem as that is, on its face, a noble cause. But that isn't why we went. And here we are losing family, friends, sons, duaghters, freinds, and neighbors because our President had no concept of what he was getting into, the cost of the venture in human life (let alone money), and the long-term cost to stability in the region. And don't bore me with the Friedman-esque romantic slobber about spreading freedom. Because that isn't why we went.