The War on Terror

How do you fight a war on terror? You can't. It's an ideology ... it has no country, no uniform, no face and you can't bomb it. I support the American troops in Iraq because they're giving their lives to do a shitty job. But they're only instruments of policy and I don't agree with the policy. To keep America free? Please! Free from what? Terrorist attacks? Iraq never attacked the US. OBL attacked the US because he hates us. Because the US has a military presence in Saudi Arabia (as well as over 700 other military bases on sovereign soil). And when we couldn't retaliate against OBL, we vented our 9/11 anger on someone else to make us feel good and to make Americans feel proud. We entered Iraq with GWB saying this was only to get rid of Saddam Hussein and that America was not at war with Iraq. True in part - we are not at war with Iraq - Iraq is just the battlefield, half a world away from home-plate, where we've been enticed, by a warped ideology, to expend our resources and to lose sight of other priorities. We use nice-sounding sound-bites like "completing the mission" ... what mission? If our mission is to destroy Al Qaeda, will this happen as long as the Wahabib Schools continue to flourish and preach violence, hatred and suicide as noble and honorable causes in the name of Allah? Is our mission to secure the borders of Iraq and to stop the insurgents? Iran has been aiming to claim a chunk of Iraq for years and if Iran didn't succeed against Saddam Hussein, America is a pussy in the long run. We can't even secure our own borders and if we can't secure Iraq's borders, how will the locals ever succeed? I somehow suspect that America is going to have to abandon Iraq sooner or later and unless we figure on staying there permanently, we should get out now and admit that getting rid of Saddam was probably our biggest foreign policy blunder. Sure, there'll be a civil war and the neighboring countries will grab at the scraps, but we spilled the milk and we cannot spend forever trying to clean up the mess. It's time to stop concentrating on a skirmish and time to focus on world events.

Immigration

So we don't like the 12 million illegals working in this country ... in spite of the fact that all of them are gainfully employed. But we don't seem to worry about the big corporations giving away thousands of jobs to people in foreign countries. We complain that illegals in the USA are not paying taxes or medicare or contributing to Social Security. But we don't seem to worry that every job sent overseas means less taxes paid into the USA, less to medicare and less to social security. It seems to me that corporations like their off-shore sub-contractors because the labor is cheaper and less regulated than it is locally. Similarly, we like employing illegals because it's cheaper and less regulated than employing legal immigrants and American workers. Bottom line is that both the illegals and big business are short-changing Uncle Sam, medicare, social security and the American Worker. There's a message in this somewhere ... has the American Worker spent too much time at the trough, enjoying the good life? Has the American Worker lost his competitiveness against foreign workers? Will the American Worker one day become extinct?