War is not a time of joy...These are challenging times, and they're difficult times, and they're straining the psyche of our country. I understand that. You know, nobody likes to see innocent people die. Nobody wants to turn on their TV on a daily basis and see havoc wrought by terrorists.
-George Bush, August 2006
In order to deal with pain you must first acknowledge that it exists, but awareness without action is meaningless. You must then go on to find the cause of the pain and sort out a way to either manage it or eliminate it, if possible.
People like me, who live with chronic physical pain on a daily basis, know those realities all to well. We also know that if the overall cause of the pain cannot be fixed, the symptoms must continually be challenged in order to cope with life each day and that takes creativity, dedication and a willingness to learn new methods. To continue living with the same pain day in and day out without even trying to be innovative or by denying that it exists is defeat.
That strain on America's psyche that Bush finally recognized last summer as a result of the continual loss of support for his stay the course attitude finally came to a fever pitch when his party lost control of congress in November. America's psyche reached its breaking point. The pain and the unwillingness of the people in charge of fixing it on a mass scale became too overwhelming.
And now, although America has been given a new prescription in the form of the Iraq Study Group report, it's already become obvious that Bush still will not release America's psyche from its suffering by offering anything other than lip service. That denial is defeatist, which is exactly what he accuses those who have been calling for an end to this pain.
The litany of words, the semantic games that have left common words thought to have clear meanings like winning and victory, defined in an all or nothing manner by this president, leave very few strategies for dealing with the pain of war that is the result of such rigid thinking. So, while the collective psyche is still writhing in agony - hoping that creativity and a willingness to change will win the day - it is still under constant assault by a person who doesn't understand that in order to be victorious you must at times surrender first and leave yourself open to help from those who have different views and methods. And, having done that, you must then at least try them.
To date, there has been no sign that the decider is anywhere near that point so the suffering will continue for all involved - suffering that could have been avoided if the cause of this pain, Bush's stubborn insistence to fix the intelligence to invade Iraq at the behest of his neocon advisers, had never been inflicted upon Americans, the coalition, the Iraqi people and the rest of the world in the first place.
So, we are all left to deal with the symptoms the best we can day to day while the person who could decide to do things differently on behalf of all of us selfishly protects his distorted vision and attempts to save his legacy while shamefully and stubbornly refusing to even care about the tremendous pain he has unleashed. If he did care, he would find some sense of humility, admit his management of this war has failed and accept the counsel of others. Only then could he, and all of us, move forward - conquering that massive strain on all of our psyches.
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