Ryan Gephart
Contributor
My question to you, my fellow Americans, is this: How many more lives need to be lost before we learn from our mistakes? How many more lives have to be lost in Iraq just to save face? When will we realize that the Iraq War is a civil war that we are caught in the middle of?
Also, we finally ousted Saddam from power so what do we do? We rearm his old henchmen. So what’s going to happen to all of these weapons that we are giving to them? Let’s hope not the same thing that happened to the weapons we once gave Bin Laden and the mujahedeen.
Lookout, this war is not over by a long shot and I say it’s time to come home. Not immediately, but a timetable must be set for a phased troop withdrawal within the next two to three years or this thing is going to get a lot worse before it gets even remotely better and cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars in the process. It’s long past the time for the Iraqis to begin taking care of their own country.
Why do we insist on financing this empire that we cannot possibly sustain over the long haul? To quote one of my personal heroes, 2008 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, “So, let me get this straight. We need to borrow $10 billion from China, and then we give it to Musharraf who’s a military dictator who overthrew an elected government. Then we go to war and we lose all these lives promoting democracy in Iraq… I mean, what’s going on here?”
I couldn’t have said it better myself, Congressman Paul, what is going on here? It’s about time for us to realize that the world can solve most of its problems without us.
Often we are told by the media that the number one issue is the economy in this election. I beg to differ; the number one issue is foreign policy. We often ignore the link between events abroad and events at home. Just think about it, if we’re no longer spending an estimated $12 billion a month in Iraq then aren’t we going to have at least a little (by “little” I mean millions or even billions of dollars) to spend back here at home on our own deteriorating infrastructure?
It makes sense and at least one of major party candidate realizes it. His name is Senator Barack Obama. I myself being a Libertarian, do not agree with Obama or his running mate Senator Joseph Biden on everything, but I believe they are spot on in terms of their views on foreign policy and how fiscal responsibility abroad will lead to fiscal responsibility at home.
So when you’re casting your vote on November 4, just remember the lessons of the past and which candidate you think has the intelligence, common sense, and temperament to help us cease this interventionalist policy of the past eight years that has damaged our reputation, bankrupted our economy, and cost us thousands of lives.