To: The Dallas Morning News "Viewpoints" page
Date:  June 29, 2010
Subject: The Republicans
Result: censored 


Looking at all the trouble in Afghanistan, it all goes back to when most of our resources were diverted when George W. Bush – with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld there to push him along, against any of the President's better instincts, if he had any – decided to invade Iraq. As the Dalai Lama was recently reported to have said – and as I myself said stuff like that, long before and then after we invaded Iraq, but it was always censored by The Dallas Morning News – war with Iraq could have been avoided if we had just gone and talked to Saddam Hussein. I mean, George W. Bush to Saddam, man to man.

Number one, Saddam was completely in awe of President Bush – just personally. There was no need for "shock and awe". Beyond that, we had him running totally scared before the invasion. As I've said before, we – that is, George W. Bush, taking a strong, manly role – could have written our own ticket with Saddam, and caused him to become good and do what was right for all his people, and to bring his maniac sons under control, and generally to add a strong stabilizing force to the region that, if there is going to be a World War III, it's going to start there.

But instead of all those benefits we might have gained, we adamantly maintained our position of "We don't talk to terrorists," and so we blindly, stupidly blundered into Iraq.

They said back then that it would take 60 billion dollars to do the job in Iraq. Of course that was a small drop in the bucket of what it has come to cost (as predicted by me before the fact, but The Dallas Morning News wouldn't let me say it). Now we've spent so much money, and lost and ruined so many lives there – including the Iraqis and also our soldiers and personnel – but with no chance of winning, we have no choice but to abandon that job, unfinished. And that country is likely to fall into complete chaos after we're gone. Meanwhile, the counterbalance that Iraq might have provided to Iran went down the drain.

By the way, I just heard John McCain on "Meet the Press" speaking of our "success" in Iraq. He and I must not be living in the same world.

Then there is Afghanistan, where we should have been devoting ourselves with focused and determined attention from the start. I figure the Taliban will be back under control there within a year after we leave. Plus now they also have a strong foothold and influence in Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons, that they didn't have or particularly desire before. We would have been better off just leaving the Taliban alone in the first place. Of course our "we don't talk to terrorists" policy also affected our relations with the Taliban and the possibility of influencing them in a positive way.

One way to look at it is it was the Republicans who got us into this mess. True, Democrats like Hillary Clinton were persuaded to go along with the decision to invade Iraq – and if any Democrat was saying we should talk to Saddam, it wasn't very loud – but it was the Republicans who did it.

It was the Republicans whose lax control of and generosity to the financial industries we were supposed to oversee and regulate that caused the crisis in the economy. So that now, if anybody thinks that all the severe austerity measures happening in Europe aren't going to happen here, they're fooling themselves. And as for bailouts, that started out with George W. Bush. All President Obama did was maintain the program.

Of course it was the Republicans whose cozy relationship with the oil industry, with virtually no oversight, made it very easy for British Petroleum to take the long series of shortcuts and acts of negligence that resulted in the oil "spill" in the Gulf.

Again, with both the financial meltdown and the circumstances that led to the oil spill, the worst that can be said about President Obama is that he failed to adequately recognize and fix – in his year or so in office – problems that took the Republicans years to make.

Here is my prediction for the future: I don't myself give President Obama a prayer of being re-elected. People are going to look at all the problems and forget who created them, so we'll go back to the Republicans. One thing you do have to give to the Republicans is that they are public relations and marketing geniuses – with the money to support it, thanks in no small part to the generous backing of all the industries who pay for the Republicans' help – and they are able to twist any evil they may perpetrate to make people think it was all the Democrats' fault.

Several times since President Obama took office I've heard Republican politicians and other talking heads say, hey, President Bush is out of office now – stop blaming him for the problems. In other words, they would maintain, a President simply can't make catastrophic decisions and policies that may have an effect long after they are gone. I would dispute that..

What kind of amazes me is the fact that, of all the Republicans there are, most of them are not wealthy, and are therefore not the ones who benefit from Republican policies. Take, for example, how the wealthy people have persuaded the rank-and-file Republicans of the evils of the so-called "death tax", which very few Republicans would ever have to pay anyway (another of the censored topics I have addressed to The Dallas Morning News). Again, it comes down to the Republicans' marketing skills. The ones with all the money, who pay the bills, appeal to issues such as "pro-life" and prayer in public schools – things the wealthy couldn't care less about – in order to gain the support of the Republican voters, so that those wealthy people's and companies' interests can then be served.

I just hope the Republicans don't destroy the whole damn world. I'm afraid they've already put us well on our way.