A horrible Thanksgiving tradition

The Food Network just televised Emeril Lagasse's Thanksgiving salute to the troops.

The celebrity chef was in New Jersey to cook one of his dazzling holiday dinners for U.S. troops at McGuire Air Force Base and Fort Dix. The program was a salute to the troops who are giving up holidays with their families to fight the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At the end of the show, the credits said this: "Copyright 2003."

The show was produced in November, 2003.

It is 2007, and it is time we recognized something.

What is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a war. If it was a war, we would have won it by now.

Take a look at this Associated Press photo by photographer Hadi Mizban:



Those men should be in police uniforms, not military uniforms.

This AP photo was captioned, "A small girl pauses as U.S. army soldiers patrol a street in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007. Violence in Baghdad is running well below the levels of last year, with the death toll for both Iraqis and Americans falling dramatically for two months running."

While it is always welcome news that violence is down and death tolls are lower, it does not prove that U.S. policy is on the right track. It only proves that the United States military has become an effective police force on the streets of Baghdad.

Congratulations to them on a job well done. It should never have been their job in the first place.

The success of President Bush's policy should not be measured by the death toll in Baghdad or Kabul. The policy will be a success when U.S. troops are back in the U.S., and when Iraq and Afghanistan have governments that can stand on their own without carrying out massacres of their opponents.

There is no reason to think that is going to happen.

President Bush's policy is a failure.

Somebody in Washington had better get a grip on reality before Emeril Lagasse joins Burl Ives as a permanent holiday perennial.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the essay, "The Motive for War: How to Stop the Violence in Iraq" at www.SusanShelley.com.

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