Old cliches are empty phrases

Editor,

Many honest critics of the war in Iraq are being accused of "beating a dead horse." Well, if "beating a dead horse" means bringing up old, tired, settled and finished business then, while the idiom may be clever, it is not apt.

Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in November advised President Bush to get out and sell the American public on the Iraq war. Bush got the same get-out-and-sell-sell-sell advice from former secretaries of state and defense recently. And since Nov. 28 that is exactly what our president has been doing. After all, we have the 2006 elections coming up, and the truth is that politics, not statesmanship, drives most issues.

Why in the world should anyone have to "sell" a war months and months after it has been in progress?

I'd like to mention another idiom: Our leaders have unwisely and tragically "stirred up a huge hornet's nest."

What many, many clear-thinking and concerned citizens are saying right now is this: "It is best right now to vacate the area and leave the nest to the hornets."

This may not be the perfect solution, but what can be a perfect solution to an action that was so flawed from the beginning? It may even anger some of the hornets further. It may even look like a defeat for whomever took the fateful whack at the nest in the first place.

But it is the right decision say many, many Americans who dearly love our United States of America and our young boys and girls who sign up for our branches of military service.

Are most Americans willing to put aside their own assessments in favor of rather empty phrases designed to make up our minds for us? "Stay the course." "Support our troops in harm's way." "Things are getting much better over there." "War is terrible. Nobody likes war, but we are there and must finish the job." "We will not give in to cold blooded killers."

On that note I end, but with this question: "What is the definition of 'cold blooded killing?'"

Bob McClellan

Polson