Pressing Personal Reasons

Those who believe so strongly that Australia ought to be in Iraq and ought to stay there “until the job is done” (leaving aside the problem that no-one has ever explained exactly what “the job” is, or how we will be able to tell that it is “done”) – people such as all members of the Young Liberals and Young Nationals who barrack for the war, as well as John Winston Howard, Peter Howard Costello (fair dinkum), Alexander John Gosse Downer (no bullshit), Philip Maxwell Ruddock, Anthony Chisholm Abbott, Brendan John Nelson – ought to lead from the front.

If you truly believe in the sacred value of your cause, fight for it yourself, not by proxy – enlist, go to Iraq and fight the heathen devils over there (meanwhile taking every care to defend our oil).

It’s a mystery to us that so few of the most strident supporters of the war are prepared to serve in it, and that so many of them have such pressing personal reasons and medical conditions that regretfully force them to deprive the Iraqi people of their courageous presence in that country.

If our great leaders and courageous role models go to Iraq, they may be lucky enough not to be one of the (at least) 12.5% of Iraq war veterans who return from Iraq suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

That is what Keith Olbermann is calling for Bush to do:

“Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations. Go there and fight, your war. Yourself.”