Campos Tells It

Paul Campos talks to a former student, and demonstrates yet again why Iraq is like Vietnam:

She's not a particularly demonstrative person, but it was easy to detect the rage, frustration and anxiety in her voice as she described the logistics of what's involved in getting shipped off to fight George W. Bush's war against Islamoterrofascism, or whatever it's being called this week.

It can't be repeated often enough that the only reason we're still in Iraq is because the American elites have almost no personal investment in this war. A president who displays the emotional sensitivity of a serial killer as he sends other people's children off to die is being enabled by a cowardly Congress, many of whose members are willing to sacrifice the lives of American soldiers in return for slightly increasing their already astronomical odds of re-election.

It's a sickening and shameful spectacle, made all the more so by the total cynicism that envelops the political debate about Iraq, with all its phony posturing about "deadlines," and "benchmarks," and "the next few months."