I hate politics.  I think that the realm of politics is filled with small-minded, overzealous corporate shills, and that the life expectancy of a person who goes into politics with any sense of honor or integrity (especially on a national level) is dangerously short.  So I write very few posts that address politics at any length.  But here’s one just for fun.

Mike Denford over at the Questionable Authority has a painful and poignant post in response to Secretary Gates’s announcement today that the tours of our soldiers in Iraq are going to be extended from twelve months to fifteen months.  His own wife is serving over there right now, and while she will probably be coming home soon, he expresses quite well the anger that too many service families are probably feeling right now.  I can only imagine it, myself; I have no loved ones over there, though if things keep going the way they are, I have nieces and nephews and godchildren who may end up serving over there in over a decade’s time.

I’ve never been a fan of the war in Iraq.  I’ve never thought President Bush was being straightforward with the American people, and I’ve always suspected his motives.  I don’t think he and his cronies ever had any idea what they were getting into, and it seems painfully obvious that they refused to listen to any advice that went counter to their own narrow ideas of what would happen.  Maybe we just invaded on a day when the flower shops and chocolate stores were closed; I dunno.  But I’m not sure I can go along with the Democratic congresscritters who want a pullout; I’d hate to see us leave the job unfinished, now that we’ve started it.  Maybe I’m just missing an essential element of the pullout idea that would allow us to do it gracefully without leaving behind the kind of mess that we left behind in, say, Afghanistan.  It seems inelegant and dangerous.

Then again, what can I possibly say that hasn’t been said a million times over already?  The only solution to this mess is to invent a time machine and go back to Florida in 2000 and say to all those voters, "No, no, you punch THAT hole, the one over THERE, to vote for Gore, not THAT one!"  Not that I trust Gore all that much — the man’s a politician, and therefore unworthy of any trust.  But I do think he might have approached the war on terror with a more reasoned approach instead of trying to get revenge on a man who tried to have his daddy killed.

As for John McCain’s ongoing cerebral implosion, all I’ll say is, "Yick, I can’t believe I used to like that guy!"