Thursday, May 1, 2008

Mission Accomplished


Five Years ago today:
Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.
In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world
....
The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the "beginning of the end of America." By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.
...
The war on terror is not over, yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide. No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost. Free nations will press on to victory.

Other nations in history have fought in foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit. Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home. And that is your direction tonight. After service in the Afghan and Iraqi theaters of war — after 100,000 miles, on the longest carrier deployment in recent history — you are homeward bound.
He was right about one thing, Americans want nothing more than for the troops to return home. Too bad there's still occupying and exploiting to be done. The idea that this man or any of the other cowards who lied us into war haven't been punished for their crimes is truly shocking. Something tells me history isn't going to look back on this era kindly. Whether pushing us to war or refusing to end it, there's plenty of blood for everybody's hands.

5 comments:

  1. When he was talking about a mission that was accomplished, the man clearly wasn't referencing the entire Iraq War. Come on, you would have to be a lunatic to seriously argue that the Iraq War mission was accomplished!

    No, he was taking a moment to acknowledge the missions of those aboard the carrier. To spotlight the little guys, the ones who get passed by in newspapers and history books. The guy who steered the boat to its spot close to the shore, the guy who cooked breakfast for several hundred hungry sailors that morning, the guy who spent all night cleaning the latrines! For all of them, Bush took time out of his busy looting and plundering schedule to say, "Great job, mission accomplished!"

    I can't believe that you look back at their moment in the sun as a mistake.

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  2. i hope history looks back on this era and sees it for what it truly was: a flagrant war crime. all too often, history has a way of glossing over the gruesome details and that's worrisome considering how much has already been glossed over/downplayed/hidden/lied about when it comes to Iraq.

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  3. Jack was joking. Bush, we assume was not. Can you tell the difference?:

    "The 'Mission Accomplished' sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished," Bush said.

    "I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff — they weren't that ingenious, by the way."

    The modern republican party has really become a parody of itself.

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  4. The boundary between humor and reality was safely extinguished in 1973.

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  5. Nick, you couldn't be more right. That's pretty hard to top

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