What do we win?

Is it a trophy? Or a new car? Or do we get free oil? Maybe we get a year's supply of paper towels. I don't know what we win. All I hear about is how we need to win the war in Iraq. No prizes have been revealed. Maybe its like the lotto where you paid to get a ticket and then you may or may not win something, I don't know. Maybe we get to keep the land, no thats not it. So what - what is so valuable for us behind the curtain?

By all estimations our lotto ticket is about 10 to 15 billion dollars and we have been buying them every month for the past 5 and a half years, this should be one hell of a powerball!! Oh yeah and I forgot how many people died buying tickets - over 4000 presently, who gets their share of the winnings? The answer to all these questions unfortunately is nothing for the vast majority of americans (Halliburton executives may argue with that considering the no bid contracts and all.) I didnt even get to decide if I wanted to play this game, I dont even know the rules, none of us do - but we all will eventually have to pay for it.

The shame is that this war in Iraq is being fought because we wanted to eliminate the select few at the top but we dont see how the majority of the people in their country are poorer than we could ever imagine and many of those innocent have died in the crossfire. Its a shame that the money we are borrowing to fund this war will go to other nations to fund their initiatives. The worst part is that I know who actually "wins" this war - fundamentalists. The people who already hate america have more and more reason to hate america. Don't be so naive to think that they hate us for our freedoms - they hate us for our exploits.

You can't win a war on terror - it is impossible. For every family in Iraq that has lost a child there is a brother or sister who has a reason to hate. For every person that has an empty spot in their heart there is a recruiter ready to fill it. If you disagree ask someone who lost a family member on 9/11. We arent spreading freedom and democracy - we are perpetuating the cycle. We have created the instability (reason to hate) if we stay we are occupiers (reason to hate) we need to begin a withdrawal as cautiously as possible and prepare to defend our own borders. We created the opportunity for terrorism now we have to sit back and defend ourselves against it. Keep in mind that in the federal budget the money we give the military is called defense spending; we also have the national guard. I've never seen the word offense in there anywhere.

What we win is nothing - hopefully we can bring our troops home and restore some credibility in the world and save ourselves from more financial ruin. Lets invest the Iraq money into new energy markets or the financial markets - lets put it somewhere where we can get return. Lets stop being the world's police force and start trying to be a world's leader again.

There is nothing behind the curtain - theres no powerball - theres no trophy and theres no way half of the people will ever consider this and that scares me.