by Ted Sherman

Created on: January 25, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

The President's State of the Union speech proves he is living in a dreamworld, and all the noble words and plans are meaningless, because the reality is a horrible political and military mess. The comparisons with the Vietnam and Korea Wars get more painfully evident every day. The only war the US has won in the past 60 years was World War II, and even that victory was soon lost when the Soviet Union proved to be almost as determined an enemy as Japan and Germany had been. Additionally, in all those wars, whether won, stalemated or lost, the US has been used by every other nation in the world to be the principal supplier of money, resources and manpower to rebuild the devastation. The reward for all of that has been a growing hatred of everything American, now at the boiling point as Muslim Middle East and Asian countries, controlled by religious fanatics, are pledged to destroy our country. The invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan have done absolutely nothing to end the centuries-old sectarian hatred. The presence of US troops has only served to make them targets for the killings that would go one whether they were there or not. President Bush is obviously haunted by the hurried withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam in 1975, and fears a similar action in the Middle East would hurt America's prestige in the world. He's right, of course, and it would send the joyful terrorists a message that they can continue their murderous ways unabated. But what's the alternative? The terrorists will continue to kill GIs in a never-ending, useless occupation that will change nothing in the historic political and religious mess that is always present in the Middle East. Is the death of one more American GI worth continuing to participate the stalemate?

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.