News From The Oklahoma Lefty

Another progressive blogger to support my offer for UNITY is Dave at The Oklahoma Lefty blog.

Dave and I have traded barbs and disagreed so much that another blogger has posed the question "Will Red Stater and Oklahoma Lefty EVER agree on anything?" in an opinion poll.
Well, here's the answer....
Oklahoma Lefty and Red Stater stand together as Americans (not lefty's or rightwingers) today and I give the credit (and all the praise) to Oklahoma Lefty.
As I said below about Otter, it's not easy to speak out against all those who normally agree with you. It takes guts (courage). Dave has courage (guts).
I don't know much about Dave, but he has two children and is a very proud dad that is for sure.
He is passionate about politics and studies religion from a variety of perspectives and someday hopes to be a published author. Dave writes about all things progressive and contributes to several blogs besides Oklahoma Lefty on a regular basis.
I hope his dream to publish his work comes true even though I probably won't agree with much of it. (as if that matters)
-red
Here is Daves post in full from Oklahoma Lefty...

Victory
Red Stater posed a couple of challenges to “liberal bloggers” to help unite the country over the war in Iraq. It’s hard to image uniting the country over this issue and admittedly I was skeptical of this “offer.”

After reading both of the posts in question, I was still skeptical until I got to this part:

“Disclaimer: Supporting victory does not mean you believe that victory is assured or that you even believe we are in a war, (or that you like Bush) but does mean that IF we are in a war, and IF victory is possible, that you support said victory. ie: Victory in Iraq.”

This is actually reasonable. Often what you hear and read from supports of the Bush administration is that if you disagree with the President then you are obviously against the troops (I spelled it right this time) and hate America. In the quote above, Red has shown an understanding of the flawed nature of to this way of thinking. We will never all agree on everything, but there are some things that we can all I agree on and I think we can all agree that we need to succeed in Iraq. Where many disagree is how that success will be achieved.

I’m in favor of drastically increasing our troop levels in Iraq to properly stabilize the country and give them time to get their infrastructures up and running. We owe them that. Life under Saddam was horrible, but most of them knew how to play the game. It was a terrible existence but they knew the rules. We shattered that and now there are no rules. It is possible that if we left, then the Iraqi’s could find their own feet, but that doesn’t seem right to me. We have a moral obligation to help them achieve stability and a working government.

Much of the criticism of the war has been based on its execution (and why we went to war, but that is beating a dead horse at this point). The war has been run poorly to say the least and that needs to change. I think if the strategy drastically changed in Iraq and we saw those changes having positive results, then more people would support the war. Anti-war folks often quote the polls that show 70% of America being against the war. The fact is that the masses at not always right. There were millions of people who were against desegregation. They were wrong. There were millions of people against giving black and women the right to vote. They were wrong. There were millions of people of purchased Brittney Spears and Jessica Simpson CD’s. Those people were definitely wrong (or at the very least have no taste).

A while back I wrote a post about the possible ways to end the war. I wrote about possibly leaving and possibly increasing out troops and how we need to either crap or get off the pot. We cannot continue with this war the way its been run and hope to succeed. We need change. We need a new direction in Iraq that helps us help the Iraqi’s win back their country. Now that we are there, we need to succeed in Iraq.
-Dave