"No matter how hard you try, you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit."

Why Should We Care About Iraq?

by Bob Burnett
http://www.opednews.com/
On April 8th, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker told the Senate the President's Iraq surge strategy has "worked" and, therefore, current troop levels should be maintained. The hearings came at a time when public attention has shifted from the occupation to the economy. Given the looming recession, why should Americans care how long our troops stay in Iraq?On January 10th, 2007, President Bush announced the troop surge and additional forces started showing up in March. Nonetheless, media coverage of Iraq diminished. A March Pew Research poll found "the percentage of news stories devoted to the war dropped from an average of 15 percent of all stories last July to just 3 percent in February of this year."

In the face of the prospect that nothing will change in Iraq until a new President takes office, why should Americans care what happens over the next ten months? There are three critical considerations that demand our attention.The US does not have unlimited resources. At the heart of the Bush ideology lurks the belief America can pursue a neo-conservative foreign policy agenda without negatively impacting lives of average Americans. The Bush Administration has disdained the notion of sacrifice and repeatedly suggested the occupation of Iraq has no impact on the economy. After five years of war, most Americans don't believe this. At the April 8th hearing, Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich observed: "We've kind of bankrupted this country" and "The American people have had it up to here."

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