THE ISSUES.
Please click on a link to learn more about Christopher Popham Smith's thoughts on the current issues.
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- IRAQ:
Of the thousands of people interviewed by me over the past ten months, some 90% expressed consternation over our flawed Iraq policy. Young men and women returning home, having lost limbs or eyes, or worse yet in flag-draped coffins. What are we really there for? – For the security of oil reserves, to settle democracy on a Muslim (Mullah controlled) nation, to maintain peace in the Middle East? Is this madness really worth the limbs and lives of our troops? Iraq is an ungrateful and corrupt country. Our tax dollars are misspent and embezzled. We would like to see the Swiss bank accounts of Iraqi government officials.
The young military men and women who have served in Iraq or are headed back for more duty, tell me that the troops on the ground are indeed loyal, patriotic Americans, but that in spite of the media spin, which portrays progress, they do not understand why we are still there and they want to come home. We were told by our government and the military that we are likely to be in that region for at least another six years – one report a few weeks ago even suggested that we might have to hold on for fifty years! Do the American people really want to see minimal military success, graft and corruption, and our young troops returning home with serious injuries or dead?
On my journeys, only three people strongly suggested that we maintain a presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, citing a severe energy crunch and the need for the U.S. military to protect this nation while serving several thousand miles away. One supporter of the hegemony in Iraq is a retired Army Colonel who served in Kuwait and Iraq. He is now a senior vice president of a company that supplies arms, munitions and security to the U.S. government for Iraq. His abiding interest in prolonging the conflict is obvious.
The second person was a Vietnam veteran, who believes that we will not have fuel for our cars or enough electricity if we pull out of Iraq.
The third person to say that we should remain in Iraq was a young 20 year old woman at a Starbucks in Iowa. She thinks that if we bring the troops home, that it would be a slap in the face to those who have sacrificed or died there. I will not, as your President, shut off Iraq from military support overnight, but I will bring home 75-100,00 troops, give them 30 days of R+R with their families and then deploy them along the Southern and Northern borders of our country. And that, ladies and gentlemen is how you protect and guard the national security of our homeland – the continental United States of America.
Surely, we have the resources, technologies and man-power here in the U.S. to override such concerns. After all, we keep telling ourselves and the rest of the world that we are the greatest country on earth. Well, let’s prove it. We need to be more fuel efficient, not only in our cars, but in our homes as well. The environmentalists and energy conservation folks are constantly instructing us how to do our part – and it does add up to considerable savings – savings that can be translated into less reliance on any Middle Eastern oil reserve, Iraqi or otherwise.
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