A Little More Politics

The Democratic primary season will just not end. There is no easily apparent way that Clinton can win but Obama lacks the killer instinct to close the deal. So we are made to watch as Clinton shows what a poor loser she is and Obama flounders around showing that he really isn't the winner we thought he is. In the end Obama will win but he may be so damaged that McCain will win by default.
The vote in West Virginia shows that Obama is not universally liked within the party. It really does show that his appeal is within a segment of the electorate and that he lacks the broad appeal that it will take to win in the Fall. I believe that Clinton's appeal is that she is willing to talk about specific plans and policies and Obama is still talking about changing the nature of politics at the presidential level. The country right now is hurting on several levels due to the economy and we need to hear about plans that will help us now.
That is not to say that the nature of politics in Washington doesn't need to change. The Bush presidency has really polarized the national discussion on policies of the government. Bush has made policy by buzzword and fear. If we are to regain our standing in the World we need to have open discussions about what we are doing and why without demonizing those who speak out against the administration. That is what Obama wants to do and believe me it is needed and the sooner the better. But Obama needs to win first and do so in a way that shows he is a leader and that he really wants to be president. He needs to campaign and win in the remaining contests and win big. He needs to show us he is president and why Clinton would be not be the president that she tells she wants to be.

A Sad Anniversary

Today was the 5th Anniversary of the "Mission Accomplished" speech on the aircraft carrier deck. I know that we Americans like our wars to be short and decisive and so Bush's desire to declare the end is understandable but he should have checked to make sure that we had actually won. The number of service men and women who have giving their lives since this is a sad commentary on Bush's lack of understanding of just what he got us into. Since the whole war in Iraq was an overblown lie and intelligence work that was nothing more than a house of cards, it is easy to understand how Bush missed that we had not yet won anything.
The saddest part of the whole adventure in Iraq is that we had no apparent plan about what to do once we had beaten the Iraqi military and toppled the government. The fact that we just stood around and watched people wreck and loot the government buildings, hospitals, museums, shops and schools showed that we had both either not expected it to happen or had no plan if they did. The fact that there was no immediate work to fix the broken infra-structure shows just how flat footed we were. I know that usually that is not the job of the military but it is the job of our Defense Department and State Department.
The fact is the military are not the people who make war, it is the civilian government. The Congress, the President and all the people that make up the State Department, Defense Department, CIA and the rest of the intelligence gathers are the ones that plan and put our military in harms way. To a man these people have let down our military. Their lack of foresight, planning or even to check their facts is one of the most criminal acts of this whole sad debacle. So on this sad anniversary let the American People demand the truth and an accounting of what has happened. Then we need a real plan, not just stay the course, that gets our men and women out of there and doesn't destabilize the region more than we have already done.