War Victims Exit Stage Right...Permanently

In a recent article by the associated press, statistics were released that showed the U.S. military death toll was nearly twice as high for the month of March as the death toll of the Iraqi military proving yet again this administration's views that the Iraqi military is taking back control of the country (yeah, right). There were about 44 Iraqi military deaths and 80 U.S. military deaths related to combat. But there was good news buried within the grim statistics of March: only 1,872 Iraqi civilians were killed. Despite that number being about 300 more deaths than last month, this shows how the security crackdown in Iraq is really working: not so good. Nearly 1/3 of the deaths in March were from the last week in the most deadly string of bomb attacks since the war began. Hey, Bush...mission accomplished asshole.
While the British begin considering diplomatic talks with Iran to recover the 15 Britons captured in disputed Iranian/Iraqi waters, Transport Minister Douglas Alexander revealed why diplomacy has taken the sideline for so long in foreign policy. "The responsible way forward is to continue the often unglamorous, but important and quiet diplomatic work to get our personnel home.” To say that the diplomatic way is unglamorous shows how the films of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood have glorified war. While war tactics and maneuvers appeal to the masses as clever and exciting, peaceful negotiations are seen as boring and "unglamorous". This just makes me sick. Peaceful diplomacy is glamorous in that there are no body counts attached to it and no mothers crying because their sons or daughters never came home.
And then on top of that, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the world powers of being "arrogant" for not apologizing for Britain's trespassing. First of all, the accusation of trespassing is dubious at best and second of all if anyone should not be throwing around the word arrogant it would be President Ahmadinejad. Between hosting Holocaust denial conventions to continually defying the UN in neither stopping their uranium enrichment programs or allowing inspectors full access to those plants, Ahmadinejad has become the poster boy of political arrogance.
We need to militarily pull out of Iraq, quit pretending that war is glamorous and stop throwing playground insults at each other in order to begin progressing in the right direction. To our politicians: wake up and grow up! Your people want progressive results not body bags.