{"id":1066,"date":"2007-03-18T20:08:11","date_gmt":"2007-03-19T01:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2007\/03\/18\/the-horns-of-a-dilemma\/"},"modified":"2007-03-18T22:18:41","modified_gmt":"2007-03-19T03:18:41","slug":"the-horns-of-a-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2007\/03\/18\/the-horns-of-a-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"the horns of a dilemma&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"justify\">I said something earlier today that&#8217;s been rolling around in my head ever since. I want to try again, because it feels important &#8211; at least to me. First, the facts:<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">\n<ol>\n<li>We invaded Iraq on false pretenses. The Bush Administration took us there based on cooked up intelligence that they knew was both fallacious and exaggerated. Therefore, whatever their reason, it was something other than National Defense.<\/li>\n<li>The war has been badly managed in countless ways, but specifically in that there have never been enough troops to insure civil order. Bush resisted sending more troops. Instead he relied on the National Guard.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Summary:<\/strong> We entered this war for some reason that is unclear. We have never fought to win, whatever win means. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Conclusion:<\/strong> The whole point was to occupy Iraq.<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">Now, faced with massive opposition to the War, Bush sends a &quot;surge&quot; of troops and submits a huge budget to continue the Iraq War. The Democrats are trying to extract us from the Iraq War and driving themselves crazy trying to find a way to do it.<\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\"><strong>The Dilemma: <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If we stay [surge][do what Bush says], we are going along with his obvious initial goal &#8211; the occupation of Iraq to:\n<ul>\n<li>set up an American-friendly puppet government<\/li>\n<li>maintain a military presence in the Middle East<\/li>\n<li>control the development of the Iraqi Oil Fields<\/li>\n<li>some or all of the above<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>If we leave, we are abandoning Iraq to the political mess we created by invading them in the first place.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"justify\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"149\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"108\" border=\"1\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/tbn0.google.com\/images?q=tbn:gl3oahHDRAA89M:http:\/\/www.kozan.sk.ca\/~daniel\/bull-3-large.jpg\" \/>I don&#8217;t like either answer<\/strong>. I don&#8217;t actually think any of us do, whether we support or oppose the Bush Administration. This is called a &quot;double bind,&quot; or an &quot;impossible situation,&quot; or the &quot;horns of a dilemma.&quot; While there are a number of strategies for dealing with such things, the crux of the matter is that there is no <u>real<\/u> choice to make in such a &quot;quagmire.&quot; The Bush Administration put us into this situation, and set it up to be like this, a situation we &quot;can&#8217;t leave.&quot;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">This dilemma does have a solution, however, unlike many. <strong>Step one is to remove Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney from office.<\/strong> They want to &quot;win&quot; an unwinnable war, and occupy a country. We don&#8217;t do that. It&#8217;s not what Americans do. I suspect that a lot of the violence in Iraq is because they know what Bush wants. With Bush and Cheney out of the picture and someone in control whose true goals are to stop the violence <u>and<\/u> to guarantee American withdrawal <u>and<\/u> to negotiate, I expect that a solution would be within easy reach. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"104\" vspace=\"3\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"150\" border=\"1\" align=\"left\" src=\"http:\/\/tbn0.google.com\/images?q=tbn:O5JwRVKWIxU5VM:http:\/\/images.epilogue.net\/users\/billplee\/bull.jpg\" \/>The solution to an insoluable problem is always to reformulate the problem<\/strong>.&nbsp; <strong>In this case, the actual problem <u>is<\/u> Mr. Bush and his Administration, not the war itself<\/strong>. How does one do this? Bring them up for impeachment, <u>both of them<\/u>. In the House, do a thorough and detailed investigation of the prewar intelligence with wide publicity. Do a thorough and detailed investigation of conduct of the war with wide publicity. Do a thorough and detailed investigation of the NSA and FBI abuse of the Patriot Act with wide publicity. The Impeachment will pass in the House. By the time it gets to the Senate, hopefully there will be enough truth on the table to either have the Senate convict, or to render the Administration impotent. But there is <u>no solution<\/u> to Iraq with Bush and Cheney in charge. It is our only possible course at this point. It&#8217;s called &quot;going between the horns of the dilemma&quot; in classical logic&#8230;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">And as the recent editorial in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/doc\/20070402\/editors2\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>The Nation<\/strong><\/a> points out, in case there&#8217;s any question about who is charged with the responsibility for war, re-read Article I, Section 8 of the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.archives.gov\/national-archives-experience\/charters\/constitution_transcript.html\"><strong>Constitution<\/strong><\/a> which covers the responsibilities of the Congress:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.1boringoldman.com\/images\/constitution_war.gif\" \/>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">It&#8217;s not just the right of Congress to fire the Commander in Chief, it is their duty&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I said something earlier today that&#8217;s been rolling around in my head ever since. I want to try again, because it feels important &#8211; at least to me. First, the facts: We invaded Iraq on false pretenses. The Bush Administration took us there based on cooked up intelligence that they knew was both fallacious and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}