Few actions of government are ever as serious as the waging of war. But in spite of its solemn importance - or perhaps because of it - the national debate tends toward partisan positioning with demagogic rhetoric and empty slogans substituted for a sober analysis of real world facts.
In the end, it seems, public policy and national morality shouldn't turn on the grandiloquence of biweekly opinion columns any more than on an administration labeling its critics "Defeatocrats" for supporting due process of law and opposing torture. So this week I do away with righteous tirades and lofty appeals to principle in order to catalogue, simply, some facts. Facts, I pray, still have a power greater than illusions spun by those in high office.
-"A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." (The New York Times, Sept. 24)
-"About three?quarters of Iraqis believe that American forces are provoking more conflict than they are preventing in Iraq and that they should be withdrawn within a year, according to a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, a group from the University of Maryland. The poll also found growing support for attacks on American forces, with 61 percent of the respondents saying they approved, compared with 47 percent in January." (The New York Times, Sept. 28)
-"The Pentagon yesterday delayed for six weeks the return home of about 4,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq's volatile Anbar province - the second extension of U.S. forces in the country in two months ? as the insurgency and rising sectarian violence exert heavier demands on a stretched American ground force." (Washington Post, Sept. 26)
-"Col. Tom James, who commands the division's Second Brigade, acknowledged that his unit's equipment levels had fallen so low that it now has no tanks or other armored vehicles to use in training and that his soldiers were rated as largely untrained in attack and defense." (The New York Times, Sept. 25)
-"To meet enlistment targets, the Army has raised the maximum age of recruits to 41, lowered their required aptitude scores, and - in another recent gulp - relaxed moral and disciplinary standards." (Slate, Sept. 25)
-"Included in the bill, passed by Republican majorities in the Senate yesterday and the House on Wednesday, are unique rules that bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus petitions. They allow prosecutors, under certain conditions, to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions. The bill rejects the right to a speedy trial and limits the traditional right to self?representation." (Washington Post, Sept. 29)
-"A new congressional analysis shows the Iraq war is now costing taxpayers almost $2 billion a week ? nearly twice as much as in the first year of the conflict three years ago and 20 percent more than last year." (The Boston Globe, Sept. 28)
-"Last May, Woodward writes, the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence estimate predicting that violence will not only continue for the rest of this year in Iraq but increase in 2007." (Washington Post, Sept. 29)
-"2,711 American soldiers have died in the war in Iraq." (CNN, Sept. 29)
In six weeks this country has the opportunity to choose whether to hold politicians responsible for these facts, or to try to wash them away for two more years of feel-good illusion.
Jacob Shelly is a sophomore in the
School of Public Affairs and
a liberal columnist for The Eagle.
