Enough!

Enough!

Enough of the rhetoric, enough of the lies, enough of the spin, enough of the name calling and anti-war bashing. Enough! We have had enough. The proof that Iraq is falling deeper into hell at the hands of this administration is out there. It's staring us in the face. Why the shrub administration and their asskissing followers refuse to see this is a complete unknown.

Recall that Bush saw Baghdad not as the final destination of his global war on terror but as a point of departure. He imagined that liberating Iraq might trigger a flowering of Arab democracy. He was counting on Saddam Hussein's ouster to jump-start a regional transformation. He expected a forthright demonstration of U.S. military might to enhance America's standing across the Muslim world, with friend and foe alike thereafter deferring to Washington.

None of that has come to pass. Baghdad has become a cul-de-sac. Having plunged into a war he cannot win, Bush will not relent. Iraq consumes his presidency because the president wills that it should. He has become Captain Ahab: His identification with his war is absolute.

As a consequence, the "global" effort aimed at eliminating Islamic terror, launched back in September 2001, has narrowed in scope. Today the global war is global in name only. In reality, it has become a war for Mesopotamia.

For his part, the president increasingly preoccupies himself with tactics at the expense of statecraft. Much as Lyndon Johnson once reviewed lists of targets to be bombed in Hanoi, Bush now ponders how many brigades will be needed to impose order on a handful of neighborhoods around Baghdad.

Ritualistic allusions to freedom as the antidote to terrorism still occasionally crop up in presidential speeches, but rhetoric no longer translates into action. An administration that once touted its expansive and principled approach to preventing another 9/11 has abandoned principle. Now there is only Iraq and the effort to ensure that today's news out of Baghdad isn't any worse than yesterday's.

Our political attention, then, needs to turn to whether the president's would-be successors can do what Bush cannot: acknowledge our failure in Iraq and look beyond it.

He will of course, not take the advice of experts. He will not listen to the cries of the Iraqi people. He will, however, do as the Carlyle Group et al. tell him to. It's a shame, really that in seven years, he was allowed to destroy a nation, it's good standing and the will of it's people. He has devastated Iraq. He has blamed others for his "missteps" his "errors in judgment" or as I like to call them, his "complete arrogant incompetence."

We, and the world, can not afford another administration such as this one. We can not afford the religious right to pluck away at our given liberties and freedoms over a book they have never read. We can not afford more Katrina's and ignorance of global warming. We can not afford more out souring of jobs and higher health and education costs.

Enough! It's time for us to speak even louder. Time to march on the White House, call our congressmen and women and demand to be heard. Time to canvas and talk and support those with our bests interests at heart. The time for dictatorship and war mongering is over. The time for the people is now.