The time has come for Jeffersons Ghost to move on and haunt other houses

Jeffersons Ghost

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Wed Jun-21-06 11:06 AM
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The time has come for Jeffersons Ghost to move on and haunt other houses

Perhaps it is time for your friendly neighborhood Ghost to haunt the Daily Kos. I certainly made some enemies here at DU but I have friends as well and they are true blue. To both, I want to proclaim that my name at the Kos will remain Jeffersons Ghost. I am neither proud nor ashamed of my name and work at DU. I am aware that, especially in the early days, I implied some real democrats were "freepers" or "trolls." For those comments I am heartily sorry. I frankly saw them everywhere, even when those goblins weren't there at all, for that is the nature of ghostly visions. Call it a symptom of lurking in this haunted house. To the mods, I offer respect because those noble, hard-working exorcists have done an exquisite job of evicting the evil spirits at this site. To those of you that hold Republican ideals dear, who are currently cheering about Jeffersons Ghost leaving DU, don't break out the champaign just yet. I can haunt two houses simultaneously.

All that said, here's a chance for everyone at DU to play Devil's Advocate and criticize the first post I intend to offer at the Kos. It is in response to a pro-war comment that had a carefully crafted line, which said, "The price of pessimism is the soul."

Optimism about war also has a price.
As a Vietnam Era Veteran, I remember a time when absurdly optimistic statements fueled a national insanity that led to the death of thousands of young Americans. At some point, America began to ask when the craziness would end. Illusion, while offered by our government as a cure, only fed widespread delusion.

If indeed, the price of pessimism is the soul, then the cost of optimism must surely be the mind. The cost of Iraq, measured in dollars, is mind-boggling but that is only a small part of the true expense.

Like Vietnam, the real cost of Iraq will be measured by history in terms of not only personal losses in bodies but also national losses in spirit and mind.

I invite ANYONE to point out a conflict in history where an imperial army has won against an insurgent guerrilla force in the long term. I'm not saying that there are no examples but for every example of a conventional army winning, there are numerous examples of large conventional forces failing more miserably than the USSR in Afghanistan. These conventional forces fail for as long as an insane conflict continues. While governments might promise a rabbit-fast victory, they only become a charlatan-like magician attempting to pull rodents from a hat when they lie.

If we measure losses in terms of mind, body or spirit alone then we ignore at least two legs of a holy triad that can lead to balanced analysis of an issue. Like most aspects of life, balance is the key to success. When success is either unlikely or impossible, is "stay the course" an example of strategy or insanity? Like some bad poker game, played on borrowed funds, the time has come to balance feelings with reason and cut our losses before we economically join the USSR in a lobby of bankrupt losers no longer in the big game.

Call it "cut and run" if acting as a talking head is your style but in poker, it's called cut the losses before the house cuts you from the game.

To both friend and freeper, I want to say "thanks for the mammaries" because just as I have sucked wisdom from the words of my friends, I slurped amunition from freepish Kool-aid filled threads.