A lot for voters to think about

Editor,

Here's what came out of the White House after reviewing the whole Iraqi situation: "The Iraqi government must step up on security."

This reminds me of a "man-in-charge" type who stepped into a family situation where the five children were being abused. The "man-in-charge" had the parents arrested, had the children spread around among other neighbors, and figured he had done a great thing. Something happened, however. The five children, even though they had been abused, missed each other and even missed their parents for some seemingly odd reason. They rebelled and began making live miserable for the families that took the children in. The man said: "How ungrateful! How could they do this? They must stay where they are."

It got worse. Now the foster families started rebelling. It got to the point that the man-in-charge had to remove the children from their new homes and stick them with a nearby relative whose family was also non-functional, ill equipped to add any children to their family, had no money, had no skills in child rearing, and resented the whole thing.

The "man-in-charge" now said this: "Well, I've done everything I can. I have made adjustments. They will just have to step up to this situation and work it out. It is their responsibility now."

The "man-in-charge, of course, had no skills in this sort of situation either. But he would not listen to the experts in matters of family abuse situations; he simply acted on his own, resisting all help from anyone in the social services.

Our "man-in-charge" in the White House has, on his own time-line, invaded a country, arrested its leader … all very prematurely to how ready the Iraqi people and their so-called 'leaders' were ready for this to happen. The only successful overthrow of horrible leaders occurs from within, not without. Not that you can't support in some ways the internal uprising, but to invade, kill, separate people, impose your own rule of law, force a government to form "before its time" … it is crazy, ill-advised, doomed to failure and becomes the breeding ground for a whole other group of malcontents and terrorist types.

So go the ways of anger, fear and attack. Let's hope that calmer, cooler, and more thoughtful heads can begin to influence our national and international policies in this great country and world of ours. There are enough of us that feel this way, I'm sure, and we need to speak out, we need to be heard, we need to be as strong in our own ways of peace, compassion, listening to all sides, diplomacy and reason as the "man-in-charge" types are with bombs, killing and arrogant behavior.

Let's think about this as we enter the polling booths.

Bob McClellan

Polson