The Bail Out=Iraq War II

Writing over at Red State Rebels, Democratic Congressional Candidate Debbie Holmes writes:

I want this bailout to not look like the lead up to the Iraq War.  I, like other voters, would like to be sure I could trust our leaders to tell us the truth. 

Holmes Iraq war comments strikes a nerve with me. I was not in favor of the war going in, nor was I stridently opposed to it. My natural inclination and general beliefs on when America should go to war indicated against the war, but some very smart people thought we should go in. And our President had serious concerns. So, I basically decided that while I wasn’t going to Ra-ra, I definitely wouldn’t be screaming bloody murder, opposing the President’s decision.

I don’t believe President Bush lied, but rather that intelligence reports were wrong. He did the best thing with the information he had. Saddam Hussein wanted the world to think they had WMDs because he considered it a necessary safeguard against enemies like Iran. He sure fooled us.

Of course, now that were there, we have to win, do the best we can to get Iraq back on track and avoid World War III, which is what you’ll get if you don’t finish the job. Our soliders have done wonderful work to make Iraq free. The surge, which was pushed for by President Bush and Senator McCain has stabilized the area.

However, if I knew in 2002, how many lives would lost and how much money we’d spend, there’s no way I’d have supported the war and no way I would have been silent about it. Yes, our soldiers helped overthrow a bad man and liberate his people, but in my mind, that’s not enough to go to war over. If we’re going to start taking out every dictator in the world, they’ll be a line around the block. Even Superman doesn’t try to solve everybody’s problems.

Now, what do we have with this proposed bail out? It’s a deal that a lot of people are telling us we need, but every principle of common sense and every understanding I have of the economy indicates this a bad idea. Not only that, there are other alternatives.

We’re going to be doing reverse Robin Hood and in the process, we’re going to strike a big blow against the underpinnings of our market economy. We’re going to create inflation. We’re going to reward bad behavior, and guarantee further abuses where if enough people get to doing something stupid, the government will bail them out.

This current generation will once against slap billions of debt onto my generation. Like mad men, they declare, “It will be good in my time. So, forget about it.”

If this current generation of political leaders were to make a monument to its achievements and what it has left for the generation that will follow it, it would be a giant statue of a hand making an obscene stature.

And they’d pay for it with an earmark.