1 Boring Old Man

Harry Reid has taken it on the chin for speaking a simple truth – the war is lost. I expect people like David Broder will dog him for saying it for the rest of his days, but that doesn’t change the eloquence of his words. The war is unjust would have been better with me. I’d have even preferred the war should be lost [because the war is wrong].

I didn’t believe the rationale for the war when it was being sold to us. I couldn’t even believe that they were out trying to sell a war. I cringed when Bush started talking about the "Axis of Evil" and saying things like "dead or alive," "bring it on." But when we went to war, I hoped he was right and I was wrong. What do I know anyway? Before that, when Colin Powell was going to speak at the U.N., I hoped he’d explain what this was all about, though I was disappointed in what he said. When Bush said that Iraq was a threat to us because of weapons of mass destruction, I didn’t believe him. But still, I hoped he was right when I watched CNN as we invaded. After all, Bush had the C.I.A. and the whole world intelligence community to guide him.

Back then, I said these things out loud on an email forum with a lot of old friends, people from my adolescence. They weren’t very receptive. In fact, some were downright hostile. I stopped saying anything when an old classmate wrote, "Well I’d rather have a President that prays every morning that one with his shorts around his ankles." What can one say to that? I knew I’d met my match. So I settled in to see what happened. I wish I’d taken to the streets, but I didn’t – we didn’t. Last summer, when I went to a reunion, those people were cordial but distant.

I expect Harry’s going to get some cold shoulders for speaking the truth, but he’s right, both about the war and right to say what he said. Being right doesn’t always win you friends. Personally, I don’t see the war is lost as a tragedy. I think the tragedy is that we fought it in the first place, and that we kept at it even when we knew it was unjust. Had we won this war in the way Bush talks about winning, the Bush Doctrine of Unilateral Pre-emptive War and American Dominion would have become an entrenched policy that would have created even more mayhem and tragedy in the world than the war we’ve lost.

I sort of understand why we bought it back in 2002. I’m not mad about it. We were misguided by fanatics, but we didn’t  know that then. But I’m still disappointed, and sometimes furious, about re-electing them in 2004. By then, we knew enough to do better. John Kerry is a good man, but he wasn’t the right candidate. But even at that, we had a chance for a mid-course correction and we didn’t take the opportunity. The war is lost was just as true then as it is now.

Harry Reid is an unlikely hero, but a hero nonetheless…