This is exactly the type of behavior that, if we are not careful, might help to bring this country back together.
The hate on the far left and right has acted like a pair of giant polar magnets ripping us apart for more than a decade. After 9/11, most believed the attack from without would help to heal the self-inflicted wounds from within.
Sadly left-wing loons, led by the likes of MoveOn, picked at the freshly healed scars, diving in like a persistent staph infection to deepen the wound and leave an everlasting festering sore upon our great nation in a desperate attempt to remold the basic foundation of our society to suite their warped view of the world.
Enter Lanny Davis, not someone who typically comes to mind when I am thinking “reconciliation”. In an opinion piece published July 21 in The Washington Times, he says:
I remember the exact moment I had my first serious doubts about whether I was 100 percent right that the U.S. pre-emptive invasion of Iraq and the take-out of Saddam Hussein was a serious mistake.
I had been strongly opposed to the U.S. intervention from the start. I felt this way even though I believed (as did most everyone, including the intelligence community) that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and even though I thought that he was a murderous, genocidal thug and the world would be better off - and the U.S. safer - with him dead.
However, I reasoned, the WMD inspectors were back in, and we had Saddam surrounded - thanks to George Bush, by the way, for which we Democrats did not give him sufficient credit at the time.
<snip>
But … then came my first moment of doubt.
I saw on TV in early 2005, in their first preliminary democratic elections, long lines of Iraqis waiting to vote under the hot desert sun with bombs and shrapnel exploding around them. Waiting to vote!
And then there was that indelible image - an older woman shrouded in a carpetlike cape, smiling gleefully and holding her purple finger in the air for the TV cameras, purple with ink showing that she had voted.
Smiling! In the middle of war! At U.S. troops standing nearby!
Wow, I thought. Is it possible I was wrong?
Is it possible, I wondered, that Iraqis truly did want democracy and freedom and the right to vote and government of the people, just as we Americans do? And were willing to fight for it, with our help?
Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Even a great thing?
Maybe another democracy, however imperfect, other than Israel in the Middle East could lead to more moderation, possibly other democracies? Democracies that could serve as bulwarks against al Qaeda-type of terrorist states?
<snip>
And then in early 2007 came the surge, which so many of us in the antiwar left of the Democratic Party predicted would be a failure, throwing good men and women and billions of dollars after futility. We were wrong.
The surge did, in fact, lead to a reduction of violence, confirmed by media on the ground as well as our military leaders.
It did allow the Shi’ite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the last several months to show leadership by joining, if not leading, the military effort to clean out of Basra the masked Mahdi Army controlled by the anti-U.S. Shi’ite extremist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and from the Sadr City section of Baghdad he claimed to control.
This willingness by the Shi’ite-dominated al-Maliki government to move against the Sadr Shi’ite extremists won crucial credibility for the government among many Sunni leaders and Sunnis on the streets, who joined together with Shi’ites to turn against the al Qaeda in Iraq and other Taliban-like extremists.
These are facts, not arguments.
<snip>
I just know I can’t get out of my mind that lady with the purple finger held up, smiling into the camera. If getting in was a mistake, then getting out - how and when - is not so simple as long as there is hope that she can someday live in a democratic Iraq that can help America in the war against terrorism.
I clipped the paragraphs I found most compelling, but encourage you to read the whole article by visiting the link above. I do not agree with some of what Mr. Davis says in this article, but I do appreciate the character he displays by admitting he was wrong… something we can all learn from.
There is no shame in making a mistake or being wrong; the shame comes from not admitting it in the face of overwhelming evidence.
