Sensitivity 101

Maybe it's just me, but this comment by Paul Wolfowitz, made while trying to answer a question "about whether the administration plans to withdraw troops right before the 2004 presidential election," seems to be more than just a bit insensitive.

"These are national security decisions; they have to be made on that basis," he said. Wolfowitz said that doesn't mean that "we're not trying to, in fact, get more Iraqis on the front lines, get them dying for their country so fewer Americans have to."

Of course, the idiocy of Wolfowitz' statement - beyond the sheer insensitivity of it - is that the Iraqis who are doing the killing don't necessarily want to kill other Iraqis, though they will kill them if they're working with us. No, they want to kill Americans because we invaded their country and they want us gone. Americans keep dying because they're still there.

Of course, right now, it might not be feasible to remove our troops - there's still a lot of rebuilding that has to be done, and the situation there is rather chaotic. That I recognize that doesn't mean I like it, but we have to remember that this is our war. The Iraqi people didn't ask us for help - our leaders took it upon themselves to decide that for our safety Saddam had to go. We didn't do this for he Iraqis - regardless of how the administration tries to spin it - we did it for ourselves. And now we have one of our erstwhile leaders saying that more of the Iraqis who have decided to help us in our quest need to be the ones to die.

Wouldn't it be better to have as our goal less killing overall?