The Handover

Well, we handed over sovereignty to the Iraqi governing counsel a bit early. Critics of the war and occupation bemoan the falsity of such a handover...what good is sovereignty when the electric grid doesn't work? Is it really sovereignty if we have 130,000 US troops there? What if the new Iraqi government decides it wants US troops out of there?

Good questions. Unfortunately for war critics and occupation critics (I guess you can't quite call it that anymore, but they will...), while they are good at pointing out the problems, I still don't hear any solutions. Is it because I'm deaf, dumb, or stupid? **Tangent....

Perhaps I am. I started working my shift today at, gasp, 5am. This means I woke up at 4am. In all previous times of being awake at 4am it's because I've stayed up all night. Now that trend is going to completely flip flop, as I'll be waking up at that ungodly hour, driving on empty highways to work while it's dark. When my alarm went off this morning I thought: This is one big colossal mistake...my personal equivalent to Napoleon invading Russia. But it's cool to be going home in a hour or so after working a full day, so we'll see....but honestly, who am I kidding? 4am. Yipes.

But back to more political matters...the point is, so long as Bush is in office, there will be a rather large contingent of people in the country (in dollars about 26.1 million dollars per opening weekend) that considers whatever happens in Iraq to be BAD and WRONG.

If Bush asks for UN help, turns over sovereignty, removes US troops, does anything anywhere in that region, those 26.1 million dollars (people) will decry it as wrong.

I guess the same could be said of war supporters - if Iraqi's are starving, getting killed in a civil war WE started, unable to have drinking water or electricity, or have US troops torturing prisoners, they'll keep supporting the case.

I imagine the positions won't change in 5 years. I hope some of us, however, are suspending complete judgement until that time, willing to acknowledge the terrible things that happen to our troops and the Iraqi people, and the ruptured alliances...and at the same time have hope about the possibilities of a more progressive and free Middle East that is unfriendly to Saddam-like dictators and terrorists alike.

Oh and by the way, what ever happened to Afghanistan?