This war is a Humvee, and the Iraqis are driving
Posted: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:50 PM by Hardball
Mike Barnicle
They stand and talk and pose all day, the men and women of the House of Representatives. They discuss the lethal confusion we call war in Iraq. They do this knowing all they have to lose is, perhaps, an election. They debate back and forth - Republican versus Democrat - on another day when more Americans and increasing numbers of Iraqi civilians will lose the most precious gift God gives us all: life itself.
By now, all these years and months after Congress acted with the spine of a folding chair to give the president whatever he wanted in the wake of September 11th - no matter how flimsy the evidence was - they finally decide to talk about something ordinary people across America have been talking about for months on end: the incompetence of a war fought...for what? For what reason? Our national security? Democracy? As if suddenly a chapter of the League of Women Voters will spring up in Baghdad? That Common Cause will open a branch in Fallujah?
The metaphor for this war is now the Humvee. It travels through constant peril, down strange roads, through hostile territory, all littered with the reality of IED’s that take life in the snap of a finger. The Humvee, powerful and quite mobile except that, in the metaphor, our troops, our brothers and sisters in uniform - our country - is in the back seat. The Iraqis are behind the wheel, not us. And the Humvee is being hit from both sides, by all sides as we sit there, targets having little control over our destination.
The war is literally life and death for thousands. And it’s about time the politicians stood and spoke to an issue that divides the land while casualties mount by the moment.
