A Hero for Florida

New blood in Congress. Meet Representative Alan Grayson.

In 2007, Vanity Fair’s David Rose wrote about an ambitious lawyer and entrepreneur named Alan Grayson, who at the time was suing KBR and other defense contractors in Iraq for alleged fraud on behalf of whistleblowers and American taxpayers. Grayson, who ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 2006, ran again in 2008, and this time was elected to represent Florida’s 8th district, which encompasses part of Orlando.

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[H]e was quoted in a New York Times article last week about the increasing impatience of liberal Democrats in Congress with the process of winding down these occupations [of Iraq and Afghanistan]. “There is no need in the 21st century to do this, to make us safe,” Grayson told the Times. “This is a 19th-century strategy being played out at great expense in both money and blood in the 21st century, in the wrong time at the wrong place.”

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Life does not consist of a Risk board game, where you try to occupy every space on the planet. There’s no other country that does this, there’s no other country that seeks to occupy foreign countries 8,000 miles from their own border, and believe that that somehow accomplishes anything useful. It doesn’t. If in fact it’s important to our national security to keep al-Qaeda or the Taliban under control, there are far more effective ways of accomplishing that goal, if that is in fact the goal, than to extend this kind of money and this kind of blood.

This is something that Democrats said when they were in the opposition repeatedly, and that truth hasn’t changed at all just because we elected a president. You can always find some kind of excuse to do what you want to do anyway, but I have to wonder why a new Democratic president wants to do something like this. This is a president who has recognized the immorality of torture, and I’m waiting for him to recognize the immorality of war and foreign occupation.

  Vanity Fair

Just don’t hold your breath while you wait. And watch your back down there.

Bear in mind, this is an enemy with no army, no air force, no navy. We didn’t have to put in this kind of effort when we were facing the Soviet Union, with over 10,000 nuclear weapons. Why do we have to put in this effort, and bear this expense, and move these many lives against an enemy with no forces that it can put in the field? The C.I.A. has said that the total number of foreign fighters in Iraq—not the people whom we provoked to fight against us—the total number of foreign fighters in Iraq is 800. So now, for six years, we have had 150,000 American soldiers chasing 800 people—they haven’t found them. So what is the chance that another six years is going to solve that problem, or for that matter another 60 years? It’s fundamentally not working, and we can’t afford it anymore. So for our own sake we have to end it.

But not for the sake of oil and military industry, which I have to assume is who we’re doing this for. Oh. And apparently for the sake of having a “war president” who can claim victories.

I’m concerned that we are not heading in the right direction. The right direction is not in. It’s out.

Even with the developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Especially—I mean, for goodness’ sake, how could you justify occupying Afghanistan or Pakistan and not justify occupying Saudi Arabia? There’s far more extremist, fundamentalist Islamic activity in Saudi Arabia than there is in Afghanistan and Pakistan combined. And it’s far better financed.

But Saudi Arabia has a more stable government.

Is that what’s it’s all about? Then why are we not occupying Somalia? Why are we not occupying Burma? Why are not occupying Rwanda? If we are suddenly the ones who guarantee the stability of governments good or bad, why are we not occupying Burkina Faso?

Patience, Mr. Grayson. Patience.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.