The Damaged Lobe

Exit, Stage Left

President Obama has announced the full withdrawal of American troops from Iraq by the year’s end bringing the eight year war to a close.  It also marks nearly eight years since President George Bush declared the end to major combat operations and “mission accomplished” in the besieged nation.  Since that declaration over 4,000 American troops have been killed with many more wounded in action.  Mr. Obama’s decision was driven by the Iraqi parliament’s refusal to grant legal protection from Iraqi law to U.S. forces known as a Status of Forces Agreement past December 31.   However 150 troops will remain in Iraq to assist with the purchase of weapons systems for the Iraq military such as fighter jets and missile systems.   It is difficult to say with any conviction if we accomplished what we set out to do since it seemed our objectives were never really clearly defined from the beginning.  As most of us recall the decision to invade was in part because Iraq held weapons of mass destruction and represented a threat to the United States and her allies, mainly Israel.  No weapons ever materialized, a dictator was put to death and a civil war erupted.  Of course we can be certain that stability in the Persian Gulf is a necessity considering the volume of the world’s oil that comes from there.  It is doubtful that Iraq will ever see stability and with Iran next door Iranian intervention into Iraqi affairs is very likely.

So with major combat operations ending and victory declared in 2003 what really transpired over the ensuing eight years?  It was like declaring your Lasagna ready and then spending the next eight hours cooking it while your guests sit around starving.  Our invasion of Iraq seemed very likely after the September 11th attacks.  The Bush administration tried to pin some of the responsibility on Saddam Hussein by claiming Iraq was an Al Qaeda ally, but the terrorists didn’t really start showing up until Iraq was destabilized.  Is Mr. Obama leaving behind a power vacuum in the Middle East?  It’s hard to say but America was shouldering the burden, we lost most of the coalition troops and carried the financial price tag of the war which not only cost the lives of 4,100 Americans but also burdened the American taxpayer and added a considerable amount to the nation’s deficit, it was time to pull out.

Shortly after September 11^th I was deployed to the Indian Ocean to fly airstrikes against Afghanistan.  I recall having a conversation with a friend of mine who said that he had heard we were storing weapons for airstrikes against Iraq at our location.  My  response?  We will find a reason to invade Iraq.  We did.  Eight years later we are pulling out.  Was Iraq a victory or a debacle?  As the saying goes, only history will tell and when history is written so it will tell of the legacy of two American presidents, the one that got us in and the one that took us out.

Another Ruthless Dictator Bites the Dust

Moammar Gadhafi is dead after forty years of iron-fisted rule in Libya.  The victims of Pan Am 103 can finally rest.

Fast and Ignorant

The operation known as ‘Fast and Furious” is rapidly becoming one of the great faux pas of the Obama administration.  For those unfamiliar with Fast and Furious it was a sting operation developed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that allowed the illegal purchase of over 1,000 firearms by known gun dealers and drug cartels in Mexico.  The operation came to light after two of the weapons were found at the scene of slain U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry.   Attorney General Eric Holder has been taking the heat on this operation and has been testifying before congress that he had no knowledge of the operation and had never even heard mention of the name.  He also stated that the operation was in violation of justice department policy.  Really?  What policy would that be?  Thou shall not give guns to cold blooded killers and then sit back and see what transpires?  The whole operation was doomed from the start and most of the weapons were either not tracked after the illegal purchase or just became unaccounted for.  However they were re-accounted after a number of them were used in a variety of killings.

What sort of strange laws of reasoning exist at the ATF that would suggest giving guns to drug dealers just to see where they end up?  The logic was to give guns to low-level gun smugglers and trace them to high level gun smugglers and Mexican drug cartels.  But shortly after the guns were introduced into the smuggling ring, through a number of stores in Arizona, they vanished, either losing track of them or just not tracking them at all.  The guns eventually surfaced at a few crime scenes in Mexico, including the scene of Brian Terry’s murder.   It just seems like this was a bad idea from the very beginning and well responsibility for this eventually lands on the Department of Justice and Mr. Holder, who in the typical “I’m going to deny everything”  fashion first claims that he had never even heard of the name of the operation and then pointed out…

“Oh yeah?  Well…well…Bush did it too you know!”

Yes, someone else did it too.  That’s the excuse my kids come up with also.  I love the adults we elect to various government leadership positions.

Would You Like to Try that With A Prophylactic Next Time?

At some time during October 31st the seven billionth human will arrive on this planet merely twelve years after the arrival of the six billionth.   Seven billion people.   That is a lot of people folks and it stands to reason that at some point the planet will no longer be able to support the human race.  We are so resource intensive.  In the completely random world in which my damaged brain resides I was vacuuming my house when I realized that perhaps millions of vacuums are produced each year and millions of others are deposited in landfills.  In that vacuum there are plastics, which used oil in their creation, energy and heat to mold them, water for circuitry, perhaps rubber for the belts.  Now granted some this may be recycled but not all of it.  There was plastic for shipping, paper for packaging, paper for printing the Tolstoy inspiring instruction manual not to mention the energy and ink used for printing.  Fuel used for transportation and then finally electricity for usage, created by hydroelectric, coal, nuclear power, whatever.  All of this so I can suck crap up from my floor.   In Kenya they walk for miles just hoping to find drinking water.   When will we hit eight billion and who will that be?  I remember when I read about the seven billion number years ago and thinking “this planet cannot support seven billion human beings” but here we are.  You know instead of investing in solar panels from failing energy firms the administration should pump billions into the condom industry.  Then instead of shipping PC’s and cell phones all over the world condoms start arriving en masse with a brief tutorial.  It will put Americans back to work and reduce the trade deficit and stop the population boom.  That’s my plan. It makes more sense than 9-9-9.

The tipping point for human population growth?  Who knows it, could be ten billion, eight and a half billion…

Or seven billion and one.

Goodnight to you all

Goodnight to you Jenny