President Bush has been constantly criticized by the Kerry campaign for not having a well defined plan for Iraq and sticking to it. Does John Kerry think the process of change in Iraq can really be scripted like a movie? I think he’s been taking too much advise from the Hollywood actors and film makers who know only scenarios where they have full control over everything that happens in their movies. This is not a movie Mr. Kerry, this is real life. You need to learn the difference.

The situation in Iraq has always been very fluid and plans have to be flexible enough to adapt to changes with events. There is just no way you can develop a plan for the complete conversion of Iraq and stick rigidly to it without using overwhelming force, causing a high rate of civilian casualties, resistance of the populous, and creating an intolerable political crisis. This would result in a rebellion of the people and an uprising against American Forces that would be more like what the media is trying to portray these small pockets of resistance as.

Of course the Bush Administration has a plan for Iraq, could any intelligent person think otherwise? As the situations developed and unexpected events occurred, plans had to be changed and modified to deal with the current situation. Just what do these critics think Paul Bremer has been doing there for the past 10 months? A constitution has been drawn up, the three ethnic factions have been brought together in a representative government and is about to take over sovereignty of the country, the nation’s infrastructure has been rebuilt to a level better than it was under Saddam Hussein, new businesses are opening everyday and more Iraqis are now employed than ever. Maybe they should ask Bremer if there is no plan. To listen to the Kerry Democrats you would think that the country is in complete chaos and anarchy without food, water or electric power.

Some are even foolish enough to suggest that there is no “exit strategy” as though getting out is the objective. It is not. The objective is to establish a democracy in Iraq and secure the country from terrorism. When that has been accomplished, we can then leave and no strategy for that will be needed. People who talk about and “exit strategy” are playing right into the hands of the enemy resistance who would like nothing more than for us to have an “exit strategy”. The more talk they hear from us about “getting out”, the more they attack to try to drive us out.

The enemy just loves these liberals, who engage in this dialogue, and encourage the enemy to think we can be driven out with more American deaths and body bags. Every time one occurs, the media applauds and exploit’s the deaths as another opportunity to parade their political agenda in front of the world. They portray our soldiers as “every mother’s sons” like the draftees in Vietnam who were plucked from their families and thrust into a hellish war to die.

The media avoids the truth about the soldiers in Iraq who are men, not boys, who volunteered to fight for their country and offer to give their lives to protect American civilians from being killed. This is what happens in a war, it’s what soldiers do, it‘s to be expected, not the exception to be avoided. You simply can’t have a war without taking casualties as the media sometimes seems to think it should be. If we loose a handful of lives in a single week, this is an unexpected disaster as far as the media is concerned. How often do they remind us that we have lost only 600 lives in a year of fighting in Iraq, while we were loosing 300 lives a week in Vietnam? Shouldn’t the media be telling us what a good job our troops are doing and how few casualties we are taking in getting that job done?

They never seem to want to talk about the accomplishments, like the hundreds of enemy fighters killed in the battle in Fallujah, or the enemy being driven out of other areas, or the unprecedented progress that has been made in the rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure. All they want to talk about is the deaths and sacrifices by the soldiers fighting to bring democracy into a suppressed and abused area of the world. They portray our soldiers as poor victims of our government sent to die for nothing, instead of heroes of democracy fighting to improve the world. When does the media ever give credit to our soldiers for a job well done? Without access to Fox News in Iraq, I have little doubt that our troops would be totally demoralized by now because of the lack of credit for accomplishments they have been given in the liberal media. When politicians say they support our troops, but then condemn their Commander in Chief and say the mission is a crime, this is not supporting the troops, it is in fact, just the opposite.

I don’t mean to minimize the unfortunate loss of life of any soldier or the loss to their families and friends, but some in the media have been portraying the loss of life as something that we just can’t take and need to get out of there before more deaths occur as thought casualties is a criteria for ending the war. We expect this attitude from the French, but not from the “brave Americans”.

Should the Bush Administration have anticipated the resistance we are now seeing in Iraq? Perhaps they should have when we didn’t find much of it as we rapidly advanced into Baghdad to capture or kill Saddam Hussein. How many of us wondered at the time; where is the Republican Guard and Saddam’s elite security forces? I did. We expected to meet them when we entered the Baghdad area but they were nowhere to be found. We continued north to Tekrit where we found some resistance, but not much. Now we know where they went. They all ran west to Fallujah while we were driving north to Tekrit. They turned and ran away, to come back and fight another day. I guess at the time, most of us thought they had just given up but now we see that wasn’t the case. Could a plan have anticipated this turn of events? I doubt it.

These are the Baathist Iraqis who were in power and running the country under Saddam Hussein. They were riding on the gravy train and had everything they wanted until we got there and ran them out, just like the new sheriff in town. Of course they hate us and want us out of there. It’s important to point out that these are the people who are always in the news now giving the impression that there is an Iraqi uprising going on against us. In fact, they are a tiny minority of the population and do not represent the majority of Iraqi citizens, most of whom still support us but many are fearful to publicly say so for fear of being killed by the resistance fighters who still maintain the Saddam mindset.

Should the Bush Administration have anticipated the participation of Iranian insurgents in Iraq? Who know? They probably considered it but didn’t plan for it. Who would have thought that Iran would risk bringing the war onto their own land by interfering with the actions in Iraq? Iran has a huge stake in the outcome of this war. They don’t want to be in the middle of a western influence and democracy sandwich as will be the case with Iraq on one side and Afghanistan on the other. The Iranian leadership knows this will soon put them out of power in Iran, and therefore have a huge interest in the outcome in Iraq. They are sending their fighters into Iraq by the thousands to join up with the Baathists as is Syria for much the same reasons. What this means is, that we are now in a war with Iran but fighting in Iraq. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. We may have to take on Iran on their own soil eventually if they don‘t withdraw their fighters from Iraq and stop sending more in.

Is the world safer from terrorism because of our actions in the Middle East? This is the question that continues to be asked and the answer always seems to be yes/no. In my opinion, at the present time, the answer is a definite no. Our actions have brought a reaction and stepped up resistance from the terrorists but this should be expected. No one says the war on terror is over yet but it seems that the people on the left think that just because the war has begun, we should already be seeing the results of our efforts. It just doesn’t happen that way. When you back a wild animal into a corner, it fights back even more viciously than before until you kill it. We haven’t killed terrorism yet, so for the time being, the world will be under more attacks and a more dangerous place until more progress is made against terrorism. If we don’t cave in and surrender to terrorism, then eventually we will win the war, and at that time, the world will be a much safer place and our country will be safe from this threat.

“But Iraq had nothing to do with 911”. This still continues to be the cry from the left who can’t understand why were are in Iraq. The answer to this is; “it doesn’t have to“. The war on terror is not just about 911, it’s about all the terrorism and attacks that have taken place over the past decade and countries who support terrorists and provide weapons to them. Iraq was right in the middle of this both politically and geographically. If it was contained for now, it was only a matter of time until it would attack again as it did in Kuwait. If that happened, and George W. Bush was still our president, the left would be screaming “why didn’t you do something about Iraq?”. If Bush was no longer our president and the current president didn’t have the courage and conviction of Bush, as with his current opponent, then Iraq would do what they wanted and probably get away with it, the US would do nothing as it did during the Clinton Administration. The problem of terrorism would continue to multiply. Bush chose to nip this one in the bud.