Dissent is not Treason

I was just over at BlogCritics.org reading an article by Patrick and posted a comment to it as well. I was so irked by the article that I wrote what seemed like a book and felt I had to post my comments here. Check out the article over here first though-- Patrick's article



Man oh man! I could go on forever with this article. I barely even know where to begin. In trying to remain civil in my dissent, I'll simply say that I disagree with almost everything you have said. Obviously I am a conservative, but definitely not aligned with any political party. I would consider myself an independent, but the one thing I can't stand is Bush bashing. Fine he isn't the greatest leader we've ever had. There's a big mess in Iraq. Everything that is wrong with the world is all Bush's fault and since Patraeus works for Bush, well he is a traitor isn't he?

Look we are at war! Like it or not we are at war in Iraq, we are at war in Afghanistan, we are at war in places that neither you, I, or even the government fully know about as well. The War on Terror is global. We have been at war with Islamists for a quarter century at least, but just started fighting it after 3,000 civilians lost their lives in 2001. Bush didn't figure it out until it was too late, Clinton didn't have a clue, Bush 1, and even Reagan never took a serious look at this quagmire that started years ago. The bottom line is that they all suck!

To win a war, we need some unity though. No running, like the Dems want to do, no calling our generals traitors like MoveOn.org , no spitting on our troops like in the Vietnam war. Dissent is perfectly fine. You can have unity and dissent at the same time, if only you keep it respectful. When our "leaders" act like stupid children, the enemy sees us as weak and they keep fighting us even harder (ie Vietnam and Iraq). Laws won't save us, running from Iraq won't save us, and going at each other's throats won't save us either.

When the surge began I was actually a bit disappointed, because we sent so few soldiers(not victims like you claim) to clean this mess up. I thought we needed to send enough troops into Iraq to lock that country down, finish the job, and then get the hell out of there. Instead we got 30,000 troops(which really isn't enough) sent into a still prolonged, bloody war. We need to finish the job, politics aside, and get our families home, period. Leaving early under any circumstance is a horrible mistake which I believe we will pay for with our nations blood and probably our children's blood one day.