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THOSE WHO were positive in mid-May that Iraq was not another Vietnam are now strangely silent.
Others who were just as sure that those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were hidden under the next stone waiting to be overturned aren't talking, either.
Meanwhile, American boys are being killed and maimed almost on a daily basis. The silence surrounding the dead and wounded also grows. Nobody wants to talk about American soldiers coming home in body bags or with limbs missing.
Nobody but their families, that is.
Gone, too, is the talk that these men and women are fighting for American freedom. Almost six months of bombing, shooting, killing and being killed has dispelled any claim that Iraq was a threat to United States security, either directly or indirectly.
This was never America's war; it was President Bush's war, a personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein, a political thirst for blood that now has our country mired in a military hell from which there is no clear or honorable way out.
Needless to say, it didn't work out the way Bush and all the hot-blooded war hawks predicted. We'd go in, crush Saddam Hussein's army, the Iraqi people would be forever grateful and we would walk out as oil-soaked heroes. That was the plan.
Instead, America finds itself fighting a guerrilla war with a civilian population that hates our guts. And that war will probably continue as long as we remain in Iraq.
American taxpayers are also faced with paying to first destroy and then rebuild a country. Estimates put just the initial phase of the rebuilding price tag at $100 billion. Those are dollars that are coming out of your paycheck.
That's likely to be just the beginning. As has already been the case, every time we rebuild something in Iraq, loyalists to Saddam Hussein blow it up. How many times can we afford to rebuild infrastructure that is almost certain to be destroyed?
Don't give me that hogwash about Iraqis still being afraid of the remnants of Saddam's fallen regime. Those people are not afraid of anyone. They just want us out.
If another country came over here and did what we did to Iraq, we would feel the same way--at least loyal Americans would. As the French Resistance did to the Germans in World War II, people are going to fight for their homeland no matter what the odds or costs.
The Middle Eastern culture is different from our own. We cannot understand the mentality of suicide bombers who would gladly blow themselves up for their country and their religion.
Palestinians have been waging this kind of war against Israel for decades and, as we have seen in recent weeks, there is no end in sight. I fear it will be the same in Iraq.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, we have prayed that terrorists won't attack us again. Our invasion of Iraq may help in that respect.
Now terrorists don't have to come to this country to kill Americans.
Our soldiers present inviting targets in Iraq. It has become a simple matter for any Middle Easterner to slip across the border and kill Americans in Iraq. And the more troops we send, the more targets we give the enemy.
When our electricity goes out for 24 hours we cry about the deprivations we are suffering. Iraqis have been without power, water and other essential services--in 110-degree heat--since we blew their civilization apart five months ago.
And Iraqi children are not worried about passing Standards of Learning tests. They are just worried about food, water and not being caught in a deadly crossfire.
Meanwhile, we sit in our air-conditioned living rooms and sip soft drinks as we watch TV. The thought of the suffering we have inflicted never enters our minds.
Now the president and all those war hawks expect other nations to share the burden in Iraq. Like a teenager who has gotten into trouble, we want someone else to bail us out.
It doesn't work that way. We make the mess; we clean it up. It is called accepting one's responsibility.
Just how we clean up our mess, however, is beyond me. Sadly, I think it is also beyond Bush and those Americans who cried for Saddam's head.
Members of the Bush administration contend this can't go on forever. Members of the Johnson and Nixon administrations said the same thing about Vietnam.
The truth is, the killing didn't go one forever in Vietnam. It just went on until the Vietnamese ran first the French and then the Americans out. It took three generations and 30 years of killing to do it, but the North Vietnamese eventually got the job done.
Is America prepared to sacrifice a soldier a day for 30 years? Are U.S. taxpayers willing to fork out untold billions of dollars time and again to rebuild infrastructure that Iraqi loyalists destroy?
It was all supposed to be so easy. What happened?
To reach DONNIE JOHNSTON: DJohn40330@aol.com