With my new one hour commute to work I have been blessed with an opportunity. Every work day for two hours I have the privilege, neh, the blessing of listening to right winged conservative radio. Being someone from a more left side of the house, this continues to baffle me to the point of aggravation every day. You may say, why would you put yourself through that? Well, to be honest I don’t like the idea of group think and don’t necessarily try to affiliate myself with any one ‘side.’ I mean what am I? A Nazi? So listening to conservative radio gives me an alternative perspective on issues in comparison to my normal leftist settings. Now I could go on for hours about some of these topics, like about the oil prices or McCain and Obama, but one thing that has irritated the hell out of me is the justification for the occupation of Iraq.

I know what you’re thinking, ‘Oh brother, not this ole chest nut.’ Yes that ole chest nut. Basic psychology tells us that people will always try to justify actions. They can be pulling it out of their ass; but after someone commits an action, they will undoubtedly find a justification if one wasn’t present to begin with. And so begins our explanation of Iraq. Now the ‘reasons’ for this occupation are endless. They change from season to season unfortunately, but they hover around the same ideas. Democrats say hey we shouldn’t have done that and Republicans say yes we should have. Now the newest Republican idea of why we SHOULD have, why we HAD to, invade Iraq is what baffles me.

‘The invasion of Iraq has brought the front lines for the terrorists over there. So now we are safe here thanks to it. Be happy that you can live your life without fear.’
Safe from what? From being attacked and killed. Here is the problem…

The history of terrorist attacks on US soil is extremely scarce. If you were to sum up the past 20 years starting right after 9/11, we would roughly be in the 3000-3500 range for totals deaths from U.S. based terrorist attacks, 2998 of them being from September 11th. It’s even less if you count only attacks caused by external agents, think Oklahoma City. That’s during a 20 year span. Now, since we started the war on Iraq there have been 4102 American deaths related to the war; this is only Iraq and does not even include the war in Afghanistan. So wait a second… to recap. During a 20 year span we lost at the most 3500 Americans, yet during the past 5 years we lost 4102. This is what bringing the front lines to the enemy is about? We are safer?

The sad fact is that we are not safer. We are actually safer NOT fighting this war. The only difference is instead of the wealthy American dying in a highly visible area, we have lower class America, the bottom 10 percent of our class, dying half way around the world. And guess what, no one seems to give a damn. Out of sight out of mind right?