President Obama Schools Republicans On How To End A War!

Welcome Home Troops And Happy Holidays!

I remember very well how during the Bush administration, the mere mention of pulling our troops out of Iraq made people like Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Vice President Cheney and his minions go nuts and start ranting about how leaving Iraq would be admitting defeat, as if just staying there for the rest of time would somehow turn it into winning. Their reasoning has never made any sense, but neither was their reasoning for getting us in there in the first place.

The Iraq war will go down in history as the most stupid venture our country ever entered into and the most costly by every measure. The evolving justifications for the war just got crazier as time went on. It was, of course, just one of the giant messes that was handed to President Obama when he was sworn in and one that he vowed to bring to an end and yesterday, it officially happened.

THE US flag was lowered in Baghdad today in a ceremony to mark the end of the Iraq war after almost nine years.

American military operations have been wound up and Barack Obama marked the milestone with a speech to troops in the US yesterday.

The president applauded the soldiers who served, the 4,500 who died and the thousands wounded.

Speaking at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he said: “Iraq’s future will be in the hands of its people. America’s war in Iraq is over.

“On behalf of a grateful nation, I’m proud to finally say these two words: Welcome home.”

President Obama did an amazing job at winding down the operation and making it possible for us to exit the country as he promised. It is one of the reasons why I voted for him and I am extremely glad that I did.

I’m going to just ignore the idiots like Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill who will surely try to distract people from this monumental day; they were out on the Twitterz this week completely ignoring the President’s accomplishment and obsessing about the NDAA, which roadkillrefugee covered the other day. For all the digital ink that people like Greenwald spilled on the mistake that was the Iraq War, you would think he would be singing the Presidents praises from high atop his perch at Salon.com — now that the war is over. I don’t visit that site anymore, but I can say with confidence that GG isn’t doing that.

There will be a lot of “yeah but what about…” coming from this camp in the near future. Some of the articles I scanned on this monumental event had “yeah buts” in the very first sentence of the article. They can’t even write one goddamn sentence of fact without qualifying it with negativity. Here is the first sentence from a story at the New York Times on the end of the Iraq War…

BAGHDAD — The United States military officially declared an end to its mission in Iraq on Thursday even as violence continues to plague the country and the Muslim world remains distrustful of American power.

Anyone remember Judith Miller and her role in selling the war back in early days of Bush/Cheney? I do. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that the line the NYT’s takes fits right in with the hawks like McCain and Graham who seem to love them some endless wars and apparently think the only good war is the one that never ends.

My feelings on both wars that were handed to President Obama has been that much of the violence in both countries stems from us simply being there and occupying and destroying their land. It’s one of those vicious cycles the Republicans got themselves into. It’s like painting a giant target on your back and then wondering why people are shooting at you.

It’s over, done, finished….we’re out of there. And I think we should all stop and take a minute to be thankful that President Obama fulfilled his promise to get us the hell out of Iraq.

Now, let’s get the hell out of Afghanistan too.