Have you ever had to deal with a pesky neighbor badgering you for not keeping up with the Joneses by leaving your land unkempt? For too long now the Bush Administration has grown wild and out of control, and our neighboring countries, actually almost all of the countries in the neighborhood, are disgruntled. The gardener that is the U.N. has been unable to keep the weeds in check, so now it's time to attack the growth at the roots: our own country has to weed out this Bush from within. The Bush Administration has led us on a harebrained and preposterous “crusade” of sorts into the Middle East, specifically straight into the lion's den that is Iraq. Many will say that hindsight is 20/20, and that the Bush Administration could not have known that this war would be dragged out and would result in the debacle it is today. I concur; the Bush Administration could not foresee the future and probably did not intend for the bloody, extended kill-fest that is the Iraq war. That is not the point (it's just more justification and proof that we should not be there); the point is that we should not have invaded Iraq in the first place. There are many reasons for this, and the fact that this war has turned disastrous only furthers the justification that we should not be in Iraq.

For too long now the Bush Administration has grown wild and out of control, and our neighboring countries, actually almost all of the countries in the neighborhood, are disgruntled.

Now, I think everyone agrees that Saddam Hussein was unfit to rule. But how much of a threat was he really to the rest of the world? True, he oppressed his own peoples, which is behavior that should not be tolerated, but then again there are dozens of other rulers out there behaving just as reprehensibly. After 9/11 however, Hussein went from the crazy, beats-his-children neighbor down the street to serial killer lurking in your basement, because someone else broke into our home and caused havoc, metaphorically speaking. The Bush Administration led us to believe that he had stockpiles of WMD's (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in his backyard. But after thorough searching for years, Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix and the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspections Committee found no WMD's, and even went so far as to set up a network of surveillance all over Iraq, so as to prevent the future production of WMD's. Needing only 3 more weeks or so to complete this task, Hans Blix and Co. were cut off and ignored by the Bush Administration, who declared war immediately as they saw their pretense of going into Iraq for the eradication of WMD's crumbling around them. Did I say pretense? I meant it. Conspiracy theorist or not, it is too much to be coincidence. I think most people generally agree that the Bush Administration had ulterior motives going into Iraq. These would include the obvious ones, such as oil (the U.S. is as dependent on oil as a crackhead is on crack), big business opportunity (Dick Cheney's Halliburton is getting all the business in rebuilding Iraq), a personal vendetta (Dubya wanted to get back at Saddam for his dad, Senior), and the chance to set up a friendly puppet democracy in the Middle East that would serve our trade interests in the region. 9/11 gave the Bush Administration the means to do all that.

Why, you ask, did 9/11 give Bush the means he needed to go to war? Because after 9/11, the American public wanted blood, and the Bush Administration saw this as a golden opportunity and pounced on it. Everyone knows it was al-Qaeda who perpetrated the attacks on the World Trade Center, but Bush had bones to pick with Saddam, so he linked Saddam to the terrorists, saying that Saddam provided resources and safe-havens for the terrorists. This is false, however, as not only did Russian, Israeli, English, and U.S. intelligence services find no link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, but Saddam is also known to hate and fear terrorists, as they stand as an anarchical, anti-establishment challenge to his supreme authority in Iraq. As it turns out, Iraq was not a major frontier in the Global War on Terror, as the Bushies had claimed, unless of course you take into account our terrorization of Iraq.

Another justification given for the Iraq war is that it was a humanitarian cause in an effort to free the oppressed peoples of Iraq, especially the Kurds, from the iron grip of Saddam. Although altruistic in reasoning, in practicality it would take a World War II-Marshall Plan type of effort (in terms of resources, planning, and execution) to pull off such an endeavor. Bush's version of the Marshall Plan is not even close. Also, the people of Iraq and the Middle East would have to be willing and receptive to us “saving” them, and the culture and religion would have to be left intact. Capitalism and democracy don't exactly mix well with Islam. Furthermore, democratization against a country's will can cause extreme destabilization, in this case not only in Iraq, but in the Middle East as well. Saddam in Iraq and Ali Khamenei in Iran counterbalanced one another by stopping each other's aggressive escalations; in essence, they kept one another in check. With Saddam as a threatening neighbor gone, Iran is unleashed to do as they please; evidence of this is their recent efforts for nuclear proliferation. Also, the deposition of Saddam causes a power vacuum which has led to civil conflict in Iraq between Sunni's and Shiites and potentially Kurds, as well as a terrorist insurgency, not to mention the religious desecration caused by our mere presence as infidels on their holy land.

History should have given the Bush Administration 20/20 foresight lenses, as the Iraq war is eerily reminiscent of the Vietnam War. If you'll kindly remember, we didn't win that war. As we have seen in both Vietnam and Iraq, it is difficult to fight guerrilla warfare with our conventional army. But, since we are already there, it is a moot point to argue over our invasion of Iraq. We should take from this mistake and learn from it, as this is the second time we have done it. How does Bush say it? “Fool me once, shame on me, er, you, fool me twice, shame on ...”,well you know the saying. The point is, we shouldn't be fooled again. Now we need to be fair and responsible, rebuild Iraq, and finish what we started. But first we have to do some yard work.