How I've become such a cynic

By Alan Charles

My first political memory goes back to when I was in elementary school and wore an
"I like Ike" button because my parents supported General Eisenhower for president.

My next political memory is when JFK was assassinated. I still vividly remember
where I was when I heard about it on the radio that cold November day.

My next political memory is when Ronald Reagan fired all the air-traffic controllers because they were striking for better wages, benefits and hours.

My next political memory is when Bill Clinton was on the hot seat for both his land dealings somewhere in Arkansas and his sexual escapades with a pretty young intern.

Not much in my history to make me any kind of political activist. As a first-grader,
all I did was wear a button because my parents thought Ike was the right man;
as a college freshman, all I did was mourn the loss of John F. Kennedy;
as a pilot when Reagan fired those controllers, all I did was mumble
about the inconvenience it caused me, and kept on flying;
when Bill Clinton was being investigated for his land deals and
his sexual escapades with a pretty young intern, all I did was mumble
about what an embarrassment he was to the office of the American presidency.

When George Walker Bush ran for the office, I supported him because I saw Al Gore as
an extension of the Clinton presidency and I didn't want another four years of that.

And Mr. Bush ran as a compassionate conservative who would unite this country again and bring honor and integrity back to the White House, and I liked the sound of that.

It wasn't until after the Supreme Court appointed him by one vote that I learned that
Mr. Gore had 540,000 more votes than Mr. Bush, and I thought "gee, why would they appoint Mr. Bush to the presidency?" and moved on, never giving it a second thought.

It wasn't until September 11th, 2001, when nineteen men willing to die for what they believed, boarded four American airliners to fly them into their designated targets; three of which struck with deadly accuracy, that I began to wonder what the president would do in retaliation for such a horrendous action against Americans on American soil.

I didn't have to wait long to find out.

September 12th saw Democrats and Republicans holding hands and singing
"God Bless America right there on the steps of the Congressional Building."
People were flying American flags, singing patriotic songs and generally
talking about how we would not let the evildoers who did this win.

September 12th was when George Walker Bush, began his rallying cry that we would hunt down the people responsible and bring them in "dead or alive." And then he sent troops to Afghanistan and dropped an abundance of bombs on the Afghanistan landscape, while telling America he was on-the-hunt for Osama bin Laden-and I supported that action.

As soon as it became readily apparent to anyone watching, that dropping bombs was not gonna scare Osama out of his hiding place, it seemed like an almost immediate shift to "we're gonna go get Saddam Hussein because he's the real cause of all this and he has weapons-of-mass-destruction he is prepared to use against America on 45-minute notice, and if we don't take him out NOW, we could be witnessing mushroom-shaped clouds right here in America instead of all the places America has dropped atomic bombs in the past."

And then he sent troops to Iraq and began dropping an abundance of bombs on Baghdad in the hopes that the "shock and awe" from those 5,000 bombs would make Saddam and his evil henchmen come running to surrender to the American troops waiting for them.

My cynicism began to grow when we pulled out of Afghanistan without having completed our designated mission; that of getting Osama bin Laden, dead or alive.

My cynicism grew when this administration just quit mentioning him altogether
and began focusing all their energy on Saddam Hussein.

My cynicism grew even more as the buildup to war increased.

And it reached its peak when, after dropping thousands of bombs on a city of
a whole lot of civilians, we never saw one civilian casualty.

I began saying then that this was nothing more than a made-for-tv war;
one designed to satisfy the American bloodlust for revenge for 9/11.
I have continued saying that since the first bombs were dropped.

And I have also continued saying that, if Saddam had indeed had all those weapons-of-mass-destruction this administration claimed, and if we had indeed known right where they were, either Saddam was a fool for not using them or our intelligence stunk,
or somebody somewhere has been lying to America and the rest of the world.

And my cynicism has grown each day as I hear this administration change its rationale for having taken us to war, having killed untold thousands of Iraqi citizens, having wounded several thousand Americans and having killed over 500 American troops, and having spent billions of dollars to wage this war so far, with no apparent end to the spending in sight.

It seems as if every time this administration gets caught in one lie, it just tells another.

And now, thinking he will appease the American public by appointing a commission to see what went wrong, Mr. Bush has handpicked a group of men to look into the matter.

That's akin to allowing O.J., Kobe, or Martha to pick their own juries. All one need do is read the backgrounds of the men he picked to see what this is gonna be. Especially when you realize the results of this inquiry won't be made public until AFTER the election.

Here's the problem as I see it.

We all remember the story of the little boy who cried wolf.
He kept crying wolf until no one would listen to him any more.

Well, we've taken out one man who had nothing to do with 9/11
while the man who masterminded it is still walking the earth a free man.

We are now in a position in America where our troops are spread too thin for us to even consider an action anywhere else in the world - and even if we were foolish enough to consider one, it would be an even more difficult war to sell than the one we're in now.

George Walker Bush ran as a compassionate conservative who was a uniter, not a divider, who would bring honor and integrity back to the White House.

And that's how I've become such a cynic.