Thelma & Louise

Do you remember the “Thelma & Louise?” At the end of the movie they are sitting, stopped in their convertible which is pointing toward a great precipice. They are surrounded by the gendarmes ready to arrest them for murder and robbery. Thelma turns to Louise and says, “Go.”

Louise knows there is no way out of this mess. She says, “What are you takin’ about?”

Thelma answers, “Go.” They exchange a knowing glance. Louise floors it. We see the car fly off the cliff into a slow motion dive into the abyss hundreds of feet below.

Thus we arrive at where we find the United States now—hurling head long into the unfathomable chasm of Iraq. After the election my Republican friends are saying sardonically to the Democrats, “O.K., you drive. But you better not crash.”

There are no viable options in Iraq, in my opinion. McCain wants to add 100,000 more troops. That won’t begin to turn things around in Iraq. After the Tet offensive there were more than 550,000 soldiers in Vietnam. We got our butt kicked anyway. Joe Bidden wants to divide Iraq into Kurd, Sunni, and Shiite sections. This is what is now underway anyway. But it results in a destroyed Iraq. Carl Levin wants a pretty quick pull out which will result in even more death and civil war. George Bush wants to stay until victory is achieved, but that won’t happen, in my view, regardless of what plan is now being considered and certainly will result in many more deaths, destruction and continuation of a failed policy and an unnecessary war.

Maybe Louise should have thought twice about shooting that guy in the parking lot?

John McCain said Sunday that "we can win this in the next several months", and that we need 20,000 more troops immediately.

This is disgraceful because McCain knows full well-- better than most people-- that these 20,000 troops do not exist, and they certainly won't appear out of thin air in the next "several months" to save the failed adventure in Iraq. This is purely magical thinking. Wake up, McCain, you've been wrong for 3 years! I've been sitting at home in my pajamas, with no access to classified intelligence and very limited foreign policy knowledge and I've gotten it right more times than you.

The President is the Commander in Chief, he has the ability to send more troops to Iraq any time he wants. He won't because he can't, and no amount of calling for more troops is going to make it so. God, I wish somebody in the media had the nerve or the good sense to ask him tough questions.

I'm so thrilled that you've found your voice in this blog. There is so much blaming and shaming about just about everything that's going wrong on the watch of this administration. To apply your creativity to raising the consicousness of those of us who are too weary to know where to begin. Thanks for giving me a laugh about such serious things. I'll be sorry to see you leave the public press. Maybe you could be a regular or start your own column. I'm proud to have a razor's edge wit keeping an eye on these guys. They've done so many things that I abhor (war, environment, capital punishment, torture...) and the traditional press has kept quiet.

Keep on typing, Jim, I'm loving it. You go, guy!

I can't believe you gave away the end of the movie!

Seth - Darth Vader is Luke's father.
Also, the wife did it.

Jim says "Maybe Louise should have thought twice about shooting that guy in the parking lot?"

And, as they say, there's the rub. The debate on Iraq too often comes down to playing the blame game / rejustification on how and why were are in Iraq in the first place. At this point it's all irrelevant.

Within the limitations of the T&L metaphor, its time to face the music, or drive over the cliff & let someone else clean up the mess.

You're taking the end of Thelma and Louise comparing it to the middle of an entirely different situation. I loved the end of Thelma & Louise and somehow to me it was not a defeat but a victory. And that white space did not symbolize a falling and/or crashing. Oh contrary.