I would like a vacation – just a little time to kick back, put my feet up and bask in the glow of all that I’ve recently accomplished.
As I imagine this fine vacation, I picture myself on a sunny day, birds chirping, cool breeze blowing, bombs going off outside my window.
Wait, scratch that last part – nobody wants to take a vacation in a place where there are explosions in the street and artillery fire tearing holes in the walls.
When it really comes down to it, that’s the sort of place people usually like to take a vacation away from.
And that’s probably what members of the Iraqi Parliament meant when said they wanted to take a two-month vacation, silly as it might have sounded.
Similar to the minute amount of thought the Iraqi government must have put into the idea of a break before it went public with it is the amount of time anyone should give consideration to the validity of such an idea.
My message to the Iraqi Parliament on that note: You want a break? Join the club.
Don’t you think Iraqi civilians want a free ride out of town? Surely some troops would fancy a daiquiri – let’s be honest, a Bud Light – on a beach somewhere. Better yet, how about giving the American citizens’ checkbooks a break?
The outrageousness of even the notion of sitting back and saying “OK” to the Iraqi government’s idea of a holiday while American troops stand at arms to defend the country has probably sparked enough of a clamor to diffuse any real attempt to carry it out – maybe, that is.
At the same time, the fact that the American people even got wind of the Iraqi Parliament’s plan should send up a massive red flag about where we are as far as progress in the war is concerned, as well as how ready Iraq is to take care of itself in the future.
Why exactly is there such uproar at the thought of Iraqi officials taking a time out?
Well, you could start with the overall state of affairs within Iraq now – such as the war.
This week marked the four-year anniversary of President George W. Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” fiasco. And is the mission accomplished? Is it in progress? Is it even really planned?
Iraq is not safe – more violence erupts every day, more troops and civilians are being sacrificed, and not a single area can be classified as “secure” in the sense that anyone has any control over protecting it from bombs, gunfire and general civil and wartime disobedience.
Secondly, the idea of these Iraqi officials taking holiday has brought to attention what a small amount of progress they have made collectively with regard to certain benchmarks they were supposed to be accomplishing.
Maybe a vacation could clear some heads about the best way to control the Iraqi civil war, and perhaps someone will run into a miracle worker while sightseeing at the places Iraqi politicians go to holiday. Probably not.
It’s not to say that sticking around in the Green Zone will help the parliament make any headway either – it has certainly been modest about it if it already has.
But what this says to the American people is the Iraqi government is more than willing to waste our time, our resources and our soldiers’ lives while it fiddles its thumbs. Iraqi officials are doing little to show the United States, as well as the entire international community, that they truly care about getting down to the nitty gritty and putting their will to make Iraq a better place to the test.
And why should they?
The Bush administration doesn’t seem to have any problem with the Iraqi government sitting on its haunches, and the American public seemingly isn’t willing to get involved enough politically to get anyone else to do anything about it either.
So we might as well say, “Bon voyage, Iraqi Parliament! Send us a post card!”
At least then maybe all those pesky American liberals can say the United States got something more than oil from the mess in the Middle East.