One of the images I remember from psychology is an illustration of a rat staring at a peanut tied with a string. The string holding the peanut has been tossed over a bar so that the peanut dangles over the head of the rat and out of reach. The rat wants the food but every time it pulls the string the peanut moves up towards the bar and further out of reach. Seeing the goal move farther away the rat stops pulling the string, because its rat brain can’t understand that even though the initial action appears to take the goal further out of reach, if the action continues the peanut pulls back over the bar, falling exactly as the rat desires.
Today Senator Russ Feingold releases a public a letter addressed to President Bush in which he expresses his opposition to the War in Iraq.
Feingold's Anti-War Letter to Bush: Your strategy also shows that you continue to view Iraq as the central front in the war on terror, even though Al Qaida is the smallest of disparate insurgent groups there and even though it has a presence in more than 60 countries across the globe.I don’t believe Russ Feingold has a rat brain, or that he honestly believes that the current Presidency is only focused on Iraq to the exclusion of Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, China, Venezuela and all of Africa. So if Feingold thinks as a human with human understanding that actions have both immediate and subsequent effects, then why keep pontificating that the peanut has not fallen at our feet yet?
Focusing exclusively on Iraq, at great cost to our military and our budget, will not help us defeat the global terrorist networks that threaten us. What we need is a global, integrated, and aggressive strategy that utilizes all facets of American power and strength against a diffuse, determined, and elusive enemy. While you continue to focus your attention on Iraq, terrorist networks are strengthening around the globe and we are losing critical opportunities to counter these networks and defeat the most significant threat to the American people.
Maybe it is part an attempt to appeal to the moonbats who truly believe Iraq is only about oil, with no connection to the global war on Islamic terrorism. Maybe it is his own sincere belief that war is always evil and the threat to America has not yet reached a point where it is a greater evil than war. Maybe it is from a desire for personal power so strong that it destroys relationships and justifies saying anything right or wrong. Most likely, he simply does not share the values that produced this viable solution to complex and interconnected problems.
I keep waiting for President Bush to answer these petty criticisms with bold explanations. The goal is to give Iraq the West Germany role to counter Iran’s Soviet Union model. It is to let Iraq play South Korea to Syria’s North Korea. The goal is to leave our military forces in place until the violence is suppressed and Iraq can achieve what Japan has achieved. It is to make this move with our generations turn in the slow advancement of human freedom across this planet.
