Gambling
While watching the first presidential debate, I was struck by the examples that were for and against staying in Iraq.
McCain said he talked to a mother of a fallen soldier, who said, "If you leave Iraq now, my child will have died in vain."
Obama countered with the words of another deceased soldier's mother, who said, "Leave Iraq now, before any more mothers lose their children like I lost mine."
They're both understandable reasons, but I personally agree with Obama and the parents who just want to save as many lives as possible.
I can see why people would say that if we pull out of Iraq now, it will have been "in vain" because we haven't "won", but we don't exactly have a definition for "victory" in Iraq. Peace, sure, but how achievable is that?
I'm concerned about the Iraq situation for two reasons:
First, McCain (and Bush) use a lot of words like "win", "victory", "honor", and "defeat" in talking about Iraq. I think this type of vocabulary instills in Americans a competitive ego about the situation - which isn't so much a war as a dangerous attempt at nation-building - so Americans want to stay there and prove that America is the strongest country and could never be "defeated".
Second, I see in the Bush administrator a stubborn unwillingness to admit judgment error, which is now permanently embedded with the ever-growing weight of soldiers killed "in vain". The more Americans die in Iraq, the guiltier our leaders would feel about pulling out, and so they continue this crusade, blindly groping and hoping to "win" so they'll be forgiven for allowing so many Americans to die.
So, what if we never "win"? How long will we continue to sacrifice American lives to this snowball of guilt?
I see it like gambling with a friend's money. You play the slot machine, and you begin to lose that money. At first, it's no big deal... $10, $20... your friend will forgive you... but the longer you stay, the more money you lose, the more desperate you are to "win", to make up for all this loss. When are you going to win? How are you going to win? You don't know, it's up to chance. Now you've gambled away $4,000 of your friend's money, and they're not your friend anymore. They want their money back. The only way to get their money back is to keep gambling. So you could stop now, having gotten your (ex)friend $4,000 into debt, or you could keep gambling and maybe win back something, or just keep losing money. When will you stop? $10,000 into debt? $20,000? Will you ever stop?
Now substitute human lives instead of money, and it's our current situation. Understandably, the people who got us into this are unwilling to stop gambling lives as long as there's a thread of hope that we can "win".
The moral of the story is: don't gamble in the first place.
While I feel sorry for the families of fallen soldiers in Iraq, I think we need to leave before the death toll rises any higher. Only a new leader, free of blood and guilt, can make that change: Obama.
McCain said he talked to a mother of a fallen soldier, who said, "If you leave Iraq now, my child will have died in vain."
Obama countered with the words of another deceased soldier's mother, who said, "Leave Iraq now, before any more mothers lose their children like I lost mine."
They're both understandable reasons, but I personally agree with Obama and the parents who just want to save as many lives as possible.
I can see why people would say that if we pull out of Iraq now, it will have been "in vain" because we haven't "won", but we don't exactly have a definition for "victory" in Iraq. Peace, sure, but how achievable is that?
I'm concerned about the Iraq situation for two reasons:
First, McCain (and Bush) use a lot of words like "win", "victory", "honor", and "defeat" in talking about Iraq. I think this type of vocabulary instills in Americans a competitive ego about the situation - which isn't so much a war as a dangerous attempt at nation-building - so Americans want to stay there and prove that America is the strongest country and could never be "defeated".
Second, I see in the Bush administrator a stubborn unwillingness to admit judgment error, which is now permanently embedded with the ever-growing weight of soldiers killed "in vain". The more Americans die in Iraq, the guiltier our leaders would feel about pulling out, and so they continue this crusade, blindly groping and hoping to "win" so they'll be forgiven for allowing so many Americans to die.
So, what if we never "win"? How long will we continue to sacrifice American lives to this snowball of guilt?
I see it like gambling with a friend's money. You play the slot machine, and you begin to lose that money. At first, it's no big deal... $10, $20... your friend will forgive you... but the longer you stay, the more money you lose, the more desperate you are to "win", to make up for all this loss. When are you going to win? How are you going to win? You don't know, it's up to chance. Now you've gambled away $4,000 of your friend's money, and they're not your friend anymore. They want their money back. The only way to get their money back is to keep gambling. So you could stop now, having gotten your (ex)friend $4,000 into debt, or you could keep gambling and maybe win back something, or just keep losing money. When will you stop? $10,000 into debt? $20,000? Will you ever stop?
Now substitute human lives instead of money, and it's our current situation. Understandably, the people who got us into this are unwilling to stop gambling lives as long as there's a thread of hope that we can "win".
The moral of the story is: don't gamble in the first place.
While I feel sorry for the families of fallen soldiers in Iraq, I think we need to leave before the death toll rises any higher. Only a new leader, free of blood and guilt, can make that change: Obama.