Instead of making my argument with no point of reference, I will respond to a letter to the editor that appeared in The State Press on Oct. 5.
In the letter, Joshua Smith wrote that he would like to clear things up for his friends on the left. Well, now I would like to clear a few things up for him.
Smith wrote that we are not fighting the same war we were when Bush declared that the mission was accomplished.
Just because the Iraq war got significantly worse after our commander in chief declared an end to major combat operations doesn't mean it is over and a new one has begun.
I know it can't be easy grasping at straws to support a guy who trades death for oil and thinks middle and lower class citizens were born to be used as cannon fodder.
I understand you've got to push the envelope when trying to support a druggie-draft-dodger-turned-war-president-cowboy. But the notion that we are doing any good in Iraq is as false as Bush is ignorant; it's as false as Dick Cheney is greedy; it's as false as any of the ever-changing reasons we were given for waging this hugely embarrassing, increasingly baseless oil war.
Not the same war? Well in a roundabout, la-la land sort of sense, that's right.
The original lie we were told about Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam Hussein has no weapons of mass destruction. North Korea does, but we're too overextended to protect ourselves from them. So no, this is not the same war as the war against weapons of mass destruction. That's right.
Another lie we were told was that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda.
A long time ago Bush himself conceded that Hussein had no ties to al-Quiada. In fact, we let al-Quiada and Osama bin Laden go free to continue recruiting terrorists in the hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Persuading Muslim youths to become terrorists has become much easier with the help of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal and the growing sentiment in the Middle East that Americans are waging a war on Islam based on an unprovoked attack on Iraq.
We know this because terrorist camps have flourished, not gotten smaller in the past few years. So folks, is it the same war as the war against terrorism? No way, Jose!
Finally, the war and oil administration said we went to war because we needed to liberate the Iraqi people.
Well, at least it's the same war as the first excuse Bush gave, or the second, or the third, or the fourth or ...
I would like to take it one step further and say that unless Bush and his people were to fess up and show the American people -- and the world -- some respect, and tell us the truth about what this war was for, we'll never know why over a thousand have lost their lives and why thousands more lost loved ones.
Smith also wrote that we are now fighting against terrorists in Iraq.
Terrorists were never in Iraq before we invaded, and the reason they are there now is because it is easier for them to travel to Iraq to kill Americans than it is to go all the way to the United States.
In this war, we are the attackers and killers of thousands of innocent Iraqis who had nothing to do with al-Quiada previously. Now, who knows? They are angry with us for bombing their homes, as we would be with them.
Smith argues that Kerry has no plan for Iraq, then immediately contradicts himself by stating a part of Kerry's Iraq war plan. He thinks that Kerry's plan will result in a draft.
Reorganization doesn't mean adding more troops, reorganization means being more efficient and, therefore, fewer troops. It will only be possible to use fewer troops under President Kerry.
Roughly 80 percent of the world's citizens say they favor John Kerry as U.S. president over Bush. I know Americans don't like to take the world into consideration, but if we use our heads we can figure out that if the world likes us, they will help us.
If they help us, the burden will no longer be just ours. That means your neighbor who went to Iraq last month has a better chance of survival.
Rather, when Kerry is elected, he will end the Bush administration's version of conscription: the "backdoor draft."
Under this draft, soldiers are serving months, even years longer than they ever agreed to when they became involved in the services. Even people who have retired are being called back into service.
That is called a draft. It is a sneaky draft, instated by a sneaky administration. And Kerry has stated that he will be the one to stop it.
Bush's plan is to say, "This is hard work," about five thousand times, make us all look like morons and, as far as I can tell, that's about it.
However, now is not the time for Bush's plan. The time for Bush's plan was in the days and weeks following Sept. 11, 2001. It is for Bush's profound lack of planning that we are in the mess we are in today. We need a new plan and a new president; perhaps one who won't think his job is so damn hard.
Nicole Girard is a journalism graduate student. Reach her at Nicole.Girard@asu.edu.
