Spring Forward, Fall Back

You say yes, I say no
You say stop and I say go, go, go
Oh, no
You say goodbye and I say hello
--Hello Goodbye, the Beatles

The only thing I'm guilty of
is burning gas
--Silvertown, John Gorka

If one place is as good as any other,
it's high time we decided.
Otherwise when we get there,
we won't know we've arrived
--Dr. Doolittle (1967)
_____________________

Subtitle: Oppression is the New Freedom.

Republicans like Joe Lieberman (yeah, you) are attacking President Obama for his pledge to withdraw all troops from Iraq by year's end (Lieberman Slams Obama on Existing Iraq). But Obama will only be honoring a treaty negotiated by the Bush administration with the Iraqi government.

Is Lieberman proposing violating a treaty which he signed? Is he delusional? Additionally, doesn't the Iraqi government have any say in the matter? Is that not the definition of sovereignty?

A few pages away is the story that many police jobs in municipalities throughout the U.S. will go unfilled for want of funds.

USAToday reports:

By year's end, nearly 12,000 police officers will have lost their jobs, and 30,000 positions in county and municipal departments will go unfilled, both direct consequences of a faltering economy that has forced deep cuts in local government budgets.

The sweeping reductions, outlined in a Justice Department review to be delivered today to the nation's police chiefs meeting in Chicago, put law enforcement on pace for its first job decline in 25 years.

"'The effects of the economic downturn on law enforcement agencies may be felt for the next five to 10 years, or worse, permanently,'' the report concluded, adding that the days when local governments allocated up to 50% of their budgets for public safety are 'no longer a fiscal possibility'" (Economic woes take toll on U.S. police departments).

Connection?

The U.S. cannot muster $35 million in a jobs bill to help cities hire Five-O's stateside -- maybe the cost of a minute of the war in Iraq. Yet we are supposed to dig deep for $Billions we don't have for protection in our cities to give to continue funding police in the Iraq snafu, this after funding a costly and futile Libyan venture that Congress never even bothered to authorize. Which brings us back to the concept of democracy.

Look at women in any of the "Libya Liberation declared" photos and you will see nary an uncovered head or body. The liberators-nee-brutes are reinstating Sharia law as Job 1, which means among other things, four and only four wives per man, per the Quran. It just doesn't jibe with jibberish we spout about democratization and women's rights, and yada yada.

Why, in our time of need -- or any time -- is the U.S. supporting Islamic revolutions which will form Sharia theocracies? Money doesn't grow on date trees in an oasis. We are not England, and being colonial greatly conflicts with being democratic; it is like being a pushmi-pullyu from Dr. Doolittle. At the very best, one arrives at a stalemate. And look where England ended up; pretty knackered.
Democracy in the Middle East is a desert mirage.