This is not the post that I sat down to write.

[mloutre]

I've got a confession to make here.

This is not the post that I originally sat down to write.

My intention was to produce an objective, informational post that would sum up the latest news stories about President Bush's intentions to sharply increase the number of troops on the ground in Iraq in a last-ditch effort to salvage his so-called legacy as a bold, decisive leader in times of war.

My intention was to reference some articles, opinions, and interviews by a wide range of individuals, ranging from Middle East-traveling Senators Bill Nelson, Christopher Dodd, and John Kerry, to former Secretary of State Colin Powell and retired General Wesley Clark and current General John Abizaid, to commentators Eugene Robinson, Lawrence O'Donnell, Sidney Blumenthal and a whole host of others, all of whom have made it quite clear that sending even more troops into Iraq in support of a hopelessly botched war is nothing more than sheer egotistical insanity on the part of the White House.

My intention was to produce a rational, reasonable omnibus essay that would do a nice and tidy job of wrapping up and presenting for your perusal a panoply of words from a plethora of sources that would, in a nutshell, really do nothing more than tell you what you already know to be so.

But I find that I can't do that. Not here, not today.

This morning's news tells the story, as it does every morning. Another handful of U.S. combatants lost their lives in Iraq this past day, in support of a what Republican Senator Gordon Smith quite rightly refers to as an absurd, even criminal war. Another hundred Iraqi civilians lost their lives this last night in the course of a chaotic sectarian civil war triggered by our own so-called leaders' illegal and immoral war of foreign aggression.

And there's a blog post I wrote elsewhere yesterday that's still weighing heavily on mind today. This is what it said:

Dear Mr. Bush:

"Double Down" is just another way of losing twice as much.

Anybody who's ever wrestled with a gambling addiction, or who's ever cared about somebody with a gambling addiction, knows all too well the name of this particular tune.

Mr. Bush, throwing good money after bad never made you rich, no matter how hard you tried. Throwing good whiskey after bad never made you sober. Throwing good lies after bad never made you honest.

And throwing good troops after bad won't make you a winner, either. All it will do is make you even more of a pathetic, sociopathic, what-me-responsible? loser than you already are.

The real problem with that is that this time you're not gambling with your daddy's money or rolling the dice with your few remaining brain cells.

This time you're gambling with the lives of our friends and neighbors and kids and spouses -- and lives of the friends and neighbors and kids and spouses of tens of thousands of Middle Eastern citizens who never lifted a finger against this country or, goddess forbid, against your own precious hubris.

Read my lips, junior: "No. New. Deployments."

What's the problem with that blog post? Nothing, really, except that it includes a standard rhetorical device that nonetheless could be misinterpreted to send the wrong message to the tens of thousands of brave men and women who are being needlessly sacrificed on the misshapen altar of one president's foolish vanity, under the aegis of this administration's false and twisted ideological agenda.

It's not a question of sending good troops after bad troops. It's a question of sending good troops after more good troops. It's a question of willfully, willingly dispatching even more courageous American men and women to die in a land far away from their homes, in a cause far removed from the principles of truth and justice and freedom that they swore to uphold and defend.

And I'm sorry, blog readers, but this matter of a renewed "troop surge" in Iraq is something that I simply cannot be objective about today.

Every day that we as citizens allow this self-proclaimed, delusional "decider" to keep throwing away the lives of our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our father and mothers, our friends and neighbors for the sake of a brutal, stupid, and criminally mishandled illegal war of conquest in Iraq is one more shameful day that we, the people, ultimately have to bear the responsibility for as well.

Every day that we allow this carnage to continue unabated, much less be expanded by the addition of tens of thousands more troops, is one more shameful day during which the blood falls on our own hands as well as on the hands of those who purport to lead us.

Every day that this disastrous, immoral, hopeless struggle in Iraq is allowed to continue is one more shameful day for which all of us -- me, you, *and* them -- will have to answer for when it comes time to for us to pay our cosmic tabs.

So please forgive me, folks. I really did intend to be objective when I sat down to write about this today.

I just can't do it, that's all.

[kentuck]

1. Sometimes we have other things on our mind...

which we cannot file away for another day...

[unhappycamper]

2. You could always join us in February as we try to turn off the money spigot.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2953551&mesg_id=2953551

[mloutre]

8. you can count on it. n/t

[beachmom]

3. Poignantly said, Mloutre

I do agree with the "gambling addict" aspect of your original comment, however. It is like Bush keeps betting over and over again with the troops' lives in the balance. It is so wrong. Sometimes one feels a helplessness because Bush is not rational and won't listen to good advice.

[whometense]

4. Well said.

And I'm afraid I've lost track of my objectivity on the subject of Iraq as well.

[rox63]

5. Hear hear, mloutre...

Sane people can't be objective about needless death and suffering. You just showed all of us that you are not a raving lunatic like the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

K&R! :kick:

[Blaukraut]

6. very well put, Mloutre

As to objectivity; in the case of Iraq it's a luxury we can no longer afford.

[fedupinBushcountry]

7. Excellent post

K&R

:kick:

[POAS]

9. Objectivity in the face of immoral war

is complicity at worst, indifference at best.

[peacetalksforall]

10. Well said. There is pain in recognizing poor logic; absurd

logic that results in destruction. Especially, when we are supposed to learn from our mistakes. Which implies recognition and admission.

This mistake involves our kids and our future. Not unimportant.

It's possible that someone could prove that more could help us get out, but no one has laid it out, made a promise, and convinced us that they are earnest. Our PNAC leaders can be counted on to lie to us about anything that they can't keep secret from us. Our PNAC leaders just want gigantic blocks of money to throw around without accountability or plans.

We are being abused. Call it torment. That's just a level above torture - torture is what some of our kids are going through right now and imminently even though they are on the 'safe' side with anglo-native-hispanic-african-asian names and skin. Tortured by our own.

[ProSense]

11. Excellent post!

Isn't objectivity rooted in morality? Can a person be immoral and objective, especially when they are in the act of being immoral?

Even the saying "an eye for an eye" implies objectivity. Backstabbing, not so much!

Great post!

[Olney Blue]

12. Excellent. K and R.

Welcome to DU, mloutre. Keep writing!

[lyonn]

13. Who the hell are you Mloutre? Wow, that was powerful!

Goose bump type powerful. You have stated what so many of us struggle to express.

Thanks!

[mloutre]

14. Just another guy who gives a damn is all.

A tail-end baby boomer who was precocious enough to get tear-gassed in antiwar protests before he was old enough to drive... a bleeding-heart peacenik with a CCW permit, make of that what you will... a lapsed show-business professional who's always made his living by convincing others that what they see is what's real, even when it's not... a lifelong progressive activist with common sense and a balanced real-world perspective, make of *that* what you will... not currently getting paid to write for money but have been known to in the past, hence the personal discomfort at not being able to maintain professional objectivity in this case.

Not a fangirl, not a sock puppet, not exactly new to DU but relatively newly active here (joined up in its earlier days, decided it wasn't worth the trouble, recently decided that maybe it might be worth it now though, hence the relative recent creation date of this active nick).

Thanks for the compliments, nice to be told that I'm not just lowering the signal-to-noise ratio even further here on DU, will try to live up to that reputation in the future.

[TayTay]

15. Wonderful piece of writing.

I agree. I think sometimes of a family that lives only a few short miles from me that lost their boy in Al Anbar province this summer. I think of the Christmas they are having and the agonizing thought that another son is going into the Marine Corp basic training in January.

And I wonder, I just wonder, how this debate about 'doubling-down' appears to them. They are, after all, the ones who are doubling-down. They lost a child in this war, they have another preparing to serve in January. This war is not gambling with the nameless and the faceless, it's gambling with the lives of real people.

The poker chips being bet in Iraq are people. The ones placing the bets don't seem to know that or don't seem to care. This effort, to Bush, seems to be about saving face, not lives. He believes he is doing something that history, in 40 years or so, will recognize and reward. So he doubles-down with the lives of other people's children and then tries to tell the American public that this gamble is about not abandoning our friends and staying the course and obtaining a victory that he can't even define.

He is not doubling down. The families of the troops and the soldiers being sent over to Iraq are doubling-down. And this is not something that I can be objective about either.

[wisteria]

16. These are difficult times. This is certainly a heartfelt posting. n/t

[frogcycle]

17. Excellent post

I find that I have become increasingly enraged since the election. It's been six weeks - just six weeks - and our majorities haven't even taken their seats, so why am I so impatient? I started maintaining my own Wall of Honor back at the beginning of October, posting links to the pictures and bios on the Washington Post's website faces of the Fallen. I update almost daily, adding the new links, reading their stories and looking at the faces while I work. When I started this, I was fired up about the elections, subconsciously saying to myself "we have to stop this madness - elect democrats". Well we did, and the beat goes on, and now this dry drunk is talking about sending more of our people into the turkey shoot. If I had even a modicum of respect for the sob I might try to rationalize that he is working a plan to extract them safely. But I have no faith whatsoever that he cares a whit for anything other than his personal demons, whatever they may be. He has failed spectacularly, eclipsing his various business failures eclipsing even Nixon, pretty certain to be recorded by history as the worst president in US history. And now he is motivated solely by whatever drives him in his befogged mind in a desperate try to pull off the big one. A compulsive gambler dumping more coins into a rigged slot machine. Betting the family farm in an effort to win back the life savings he has already lost, dooming his family to poverty.

A mere six weeks ago I thought if we could just pull off an election miracle, we could fix it. The system could be used to fix the system. But the past couple of days are putting me into a state of panic. I find myself speculating about the merits of a military coup.

The country needs an intervention. There is not time for "the system" to do its work. He needs to be told "ENOUGH" and sent to sit in a corner with a duncecap. Where is Barry Goldwater when we need him? Is there one republican leader with the patriotism and guts to face off with bush? Colin Powell showed a little moxie the other day. Maybe if he would get Olbermann as a speechwriter...

[Doctor_J]

18. One small correction, mloutre

Around here, we don't refer to the current occupant of the White House as "President Bush". Bestowing that honorific on him denegrates all of the others who have worked their asses off to make this a better country. Between that and the fact that he still hasn't fairly won an election, kindly find another title

[mloutre]

19. while I agree with you on principle, the shameful fact remains...

...that one way or another, whether he deserves if or not, Shrubya currently has legal rights to the title, which means he also has the launch codes, which quite frankly scares the crap out of me.