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Gandalf Grey
Guest
Happy Anniversary, America! How Lethally Stupid Can One Country Be?
By David Michael Green
Created Mar 21 2008 - 10:54am
Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like
having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a
different galaxy.
As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration (No, it's not
a terrorist attack - that was 2001! No, it's not a catastrophic war - that
was 2003! No, it's not a drowning city - that was 2005! This one is an
economic meltdown, ladies and gentlemen!) bringing to it the same blithe
disengagement with which he's attended the previous ones, you cannot but
stop and gaze in stark comedic awe, realizing that the most powerful polity
that ever existed on the planet twice picked this imbecilic buffoon as its
leader, from among 300 million other choices. Seeing him clown with the
Washington press corps yet once again - and seeing them fawn over him, laugh
in all the right places, and give him a standing ovation, also yet once
again - is the equivalent of having all your logic circuits blown
simultaneously. Truly, the universe has a twisted and deeply ironic sense of
humor. Monty Python is about as funny - and as stiff - as Dick Nixon, by
comparison.
It's simply incomprehensible. It's not so astonishing, of course, that a
country could have a bad leader whose aims are nefarious on the occasions
when they are competent enough to rise to that level of intentionality.
Plenty of countries have managed that feat, especially when - as was the
case with Bush - every sort of scam is employed to steal power, and then
pure corruption and intimidation used to keep it. History is quite littered
indeed with bimbos and petty criminals of this caliber. What is harder to
explain is how a country of such remarkable achievements in other domains,
and with the capacity to choose, and in the twenty-first century no less,
allows this to happen. And then stands by silently watching for eight years
as the tragedy unfolds before their eyes, all 600 million of them, hardly
any of them even blinking.
And so, remarkably, as we mark now the fifth anniversary of the very most
tragic of these debacles, the most destructive and the most shameful -
because it was the most avoidable - the sad question of the hour is less
what is to be done about it than will anyone even notice? Not likely. And
not for very long if they do. And, most of all, definitely not enough so as
to take meaningful action to bring it to an end, even at this absurdly late
date.
But let's give credit where credit is due. This is precisely by design. This
is exactly the outcome intended by the greatest propaganda-promulgating
regime since Hermann Goering set fire to the Reichstag. It was Goering
himself who famously reminded us that, "Naturally the common people don't
want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany.
That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who
determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a
communist dictatorship. ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be
brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is
to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any
country."
Sure worked in Germany. And it worked even better here, because these guys
were so absolutely careful to avoid exposing the costs of their war to those
who could demand its end. For example, by some counts, there are more
mercenaries fighting in Iraq, at extremely high cost, than there are US
military personnel. There's only one reason for that. If the administration
implemented the draft that is actually necessary to supply this war with
adequate personnel, the public would end both the war and the careers of its
sponsors, post haste. For the same reason, this is the first American war
ever which has not only not been accompanied by a tax increase, but has in
fact witnessed a tax cut. Likewise - to 'preserve the dignity' of the dead,
of course - you are no longer permitted to see photographs of flag-draped
caskets returning to Dover Air Force Base. And the press are embedded with
forces who are also responsible for their safety, which is just a fancy way
of saying that they're so censored they make Pravda look good. It is, in
short, quite easy for average Americans to get through their day, every day,
without the war impacting their lives in any visible respect, and that is
precisely what hundreds of millions of us are doing, week in and week out.
All of this is courtesy of an administration that couldn't run a
governmental program to save its own life - but, boy, they sure as hell know
how to market stuff.
So perhaps there is no excuse, after all, for my naivete, for my
credulousness in wanting to believe that twenty-first century America might
be different enough not to follow the smallest of men - a personal failure
and a 40-year drunkard who, unlike Herr Goering's fuehrer, couldn't even
claim charismatic eloquence as the sole virtue accounting for his power - to
follow such a petulant child off the deep end of a completely unjustified
war. Perhaps Americans and American democracy are no wiser or better than
any other people or political system, even today, even after the worst
century of warfare in human history, even after the mirror-image experience
of Vietnam. Maybe the experience of Iraq hasn't even changed them, and
they'll once again follow like lemmings when led to war by pathetic
creatures such as George W. Bush, fifty years from now. Or five years from
now. Or even five months from now, as the creature d.b.a Dick Cheney tees up
a confrontation with Iran in order keep Democrats out of the White House,
and himself out of jail.
Sure, presidents and prime ministers, no less than kings and fuehrers, will
lie their countries into war. Sure, they're very good at it, and getting
better all the time. Definitely a frightened people are more prone to
stupidity than those lucky enough to contemplate in the luxury of quiet
safety. Without question, it helps an awful lot - if you're just Joe
Sixpack, out there trying to figure out international politics in-between a
long day's work, helping the kids with their algebra homework, and the
Yankee game - to have a checking-and-balancing Congress, a responsible
opposition party, and/or a critical media helping you to understand the
issues accurately, rather than gleefully capitulating to executive power at
every opportunity. But that by no means excuses a public who were
fundamentally far more lazy than they were ignorant or confused. And lazy is
one thing when you're talking about a highway bill or even national
healthcare. But when it comes to war, lazy is murder.
I don't think it took a giant leap of logic to understand that this war was
bogus from the beginning, even based on what was known at the time. The war
was sold on three basic arguments, each of which could have been easily
dismantled even then with a little thoughtful consideration.
The first was WMD, of course. So, okay, perhaps your average American didn't
know that the United States government (including many in the current
administration) had actually once supplied Saddam Hussein the materiel to
make these evil weapons, and had covered for him at the UN and elsewhere
when he used them. Although this historical myopia is very much part of the
problem, of course. Americans are so ready to denounce supposed enemies
without doing the slightest bit of historical homework to become acquainted
with the slightest bit of history to make sense of the situation. If you
don't know that the US actually canceled elections and helped assassinate a
'democratic' president in Vietnam, of course you're going to support war
there. If you don't know that the US toppled a democratically elected
Iranian government to steal the country's oil and then installed a brutal
dictatorship in its place, of course you're going to be angry at US
diplomats being held hostage. And if you don't bother to learn the true
history of Iraq, perhaps you'll find the WMD argument quite persuasive.
But, in fact, even without the historical background information, it never
made a damn bit of sense. Iraq had been pulverized by war and sanctions for
over twenty years prior to 2003. Two-thirds of its airspace was controlled
by foreign militaries. Its northern region was effectively autonomous, a
separate country in all but name. It was in no position to attack anyone.
Moreover, it hadn't attacked anyone - not the United States or anyone else.
Indeed, it hadn't even threatened to attack anyone. Shouldn't that be part
of the calculation in determining whether to go to war? Do we really want to
give carte blanche to any dry (we hope) drunkard in the White House who
today wants to bomb Norway ("They're stealing our fish!"), or tomorrow wants
to invade Burkina Faso ("They dress funny!")?
Too often, of course, the historical answer to that question has
unfortunately been yes, we apparently do want to do that. But let's consider
the massive warning signs in this case, even apart from what could be known
about the administration's lies at the time. Shouldn't it have been
enormously problematic that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? Even the
administration never had the gall to make that claim. Wasn't it transparent
to anyone that America had plenty on its plate already in dealing with the
enemy we were told we had, rather than adding a new adventure to the pile?
And why wasn't this thing selling throughout the world, or even amongst the
traitorous half of the Democratic Party in Congress? Remember how everyone
at home and abroad - yes, including the French - supported the US and its
military actions in Afghanistan only twelve months before? Shouldn't it have
been a warning sign of epic proportions that these same folks wouldn't
countenance a war in Iraq just a year later? That the administration had to
yank its Security Council resolution off the table, even after breaking both
the arms of every member-state around the horseshoe table, because it could
still only get Britain and two other patsies to lie down for this outrage,
out of a total of fifteen, and nine needed to pass?
And how about the logic of that whole WMD thing, after all? Did anyone ever
stop to think that several dozen other countries have WMD, including some
that are pretty hostile to the United States? Did anyone not remember that
the Soviets once had nearly 25,000 strategic nuclear warheads pointed in our
direction? What ever happened to the logic of deterrence? To mutually
assured destruction? And what about the mad rush to go to war, preempting
the UN weapons inspectors from doing their job? Are we really okay with the
notion that instead of 'risking' whatever would have been at risk by giving
the inspectors another six or eight weeks to finish up, we've instead bought
this devastating war down on our own heads for no reason at all? If you stop
to think about it, it makes you shudder. Which I guess explains why not too
many people stop to think about it.
The second rationale for war was the bogus linkage between Iraq and al
Qaeda. The extent and ramifications of this lie are so significant that the
White House, it was just recently revealed, squelched a Pentagon report
showing no connections between the two. Is this sort of censorship what the
Bush administration means by democracy, the remedy it's always preaching for
the rest of the world but never practicing at home? Anyhow, remember how
definitive Cheney and the rest were of this supposed al Qaeda linkage, based
pretty much entirely on a meeting between two operatives in Prague which
likely didn't even take place? Now we find out that the Department of
Defense has spent the last five years combing through a mere 600,000
documents, and found zero evidence of such a link. Not some evidence. Not
mixed evidence. Zero evidence.
But you could tell even then that they had almost nothing to go on. Christ,
the United States government itself has had far more interactions with al
Qaeda - including helping to build the beast from its inception - than one
disputed meeting between two spooks in Prague. Doesn't it seem that a
decision to go to war should hang on more than a single thread like that,
let alone a narrow and tattered one? And how many of us are down for
attacking any country right now that might have had a single meeting between
a low-level functionary and an al Qaeda representative?
Then, once again, there's the matter of that whole pesky logic thing. Pay
attention now, class. What do we know about al Qaeda? They are devoted to
religious war - jihad - in the name of replacing governments across the
Middle East with theocracies, or better yet recreating the old Islamic
caliphate stretching across the region, right? Right. Now if this vision
could have more thoroughly contradicted Saddam's agenda for a secular
dictatorship seeking regional domination on his own Stalinist terms, it is
hard to imagine how. You don't need a PhD in international politics to see
that these two actors were about as antithetical to each other as the
Republican Party is to integrity. Then again, even having one doesn't
necessarily mean you have the foggiest clue about what's going on in the
world, as Condoleeza Rice clearly demonstrated by brilliantly failing to
anticipate that Hamas would win elections she had pushed the Palestinians to
hold. For someone serving as secretary of state, this idiocy is the rough
equivalent of anyone else being shocked when a dropped bowling ball hurtles
to the ground, because they're not yet fully acquainted with the concept of
gravity. Evidently, in Texas this is what they call 'credentials'.
Lastly, Bush's little adventure in Mesopotamia was supposed to bring
democracy to the region, remember? Never mind, of course, that there has
long already been a fairly thriving Islamic democracy, right next door.
Oops! It's called Turkey. And let's not forget Mr. Bush's long-standing
devotion to democracy, as he amply demonstrated in the American election of
2000. Or as he has continually manifested by bravely and publically pushing
the Chinese to democratize. Just as he has with his pals in Egypt and
especially the family friends running Saudi Arabia, the recipient of more
American foreign aid than nearly any other country in all the world. And
let's not forget the several hundred thousand perished souls from Darfur,
whom this great champion of human rights has fought valiantly to keep alive
by... by... well, I'm sure he's done a lot behind the scenes. Sure is gonna
be hard for them to exercise their precious right to vote from the next
world, eh?
What is clear is that the reasons given to the American public for the war
in Iraq were entirely bogus. This much is already on the public record, from
the Downing Street Memos and beyond. Even if we can only speculate on why
they actually invaded - oil, glory, personal insecurity, Israel, clobbering
Democrats, Middle Eastern dominance - what we know for sure is that the
rationale fed to the public was a knowingly fabricated pack of scummy lies.
It wasn't about WMD, it wasn't about links to al Qaeda, and it sure wasn't
about democracy.
But even if we can't identify the true motivations within the administration
for invading, we can surely begin to see the costs. Probably a million Iraqi
civilians are dead. Over four million are displaced and now living as
refugees. Together, these equal a staggering one-fifth of the population of
the entire country. Meanwhile, the remaining four-fifths are living in
squalor, fear and a psychological damage so extensive that it is hard to
grasp. America has lost 4,000 soldiers, with perhaps another 30,000 gravely
wounded. Hundreds of thousands more will be scarred for life from their
experiences in the hell of Mr. Bush's war. Our military is broken and
incapable of responding to a real emergency, at home or abroad. Our economy
will sustain a blow of perhaps three trillion dollars before it is all said
and done. Our reputation in the world is in the toilet. We have turned the
Iranian theocracy into a regional hegemon. And we have massively
proliferated our own enemies within the Islamic community. That would be one
hell of an expensive war, even if the reasons given for it were legitimate.
It is nearly incomprehensible considering that they were not.
This week, a man died in France, the last surviving veteran of World War I,
a devastating conflict that - even a century later - nobody can still really
explain to this day. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, John McCain and Joe
"Make-me-SecDef-Mac-oh-please-pick-me-Mac" Lieberman parachuted into Iraq
for photo-ops to sustain the war they don't have the integrity or the guts
to abandon. Never mind that their visits had to be by surprise, and that
they stroll around the Green Zone wearing armored vests - surely the most
powerful measures of the war's success imaginable. Of course, to be fair,
we've only been at it for five years now. Perhaps after the remaining
ninety-five on McCain's agenda go by, Americans will finally be safe enough
in Iraq to announce their visits in advance.
So, Happy Anniversary, America! You put these people in charge, and then -
after seeing in explicit in detail what they were capable of - you actually
did it again in 2004! You stood by in silence watching the devastation
wrought upon an innocent people, produced in your name and financed by your
tax dollars. And you continue to do just that again, now in Year Six.
Brilliant! Put on your party hat, America. You won the prize.
You've successfully answered the musical question, "How lethally stupid can
one country be?"
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
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political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By David Michael Green
Created Mar 21 2008 - 10:54am
Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like
having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a
different galaxy.
As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration (No, it's not
a terrorist attack - that was 2001! No, it's not a catastrophic war - that
was 2003! No, it's not a drowning city - that was 2005! This one is an
economic meltdown, ladies and gentlemen!) bringing to it the same blithe
disengagement with which he's attended the previous ones, you cannot but
stop and gaze in stark comedic awe, realizing that the most powerful polity
that ever existed on the planet twice picked this imbecilic buffoon as its
leader, from among 300 million other choices. Seeing him clown with the
Washington press corps yet once again - and seeing them fawn over him, laugh
in all the right places, and give him a standing ovation, also yet once
again - is the equivalent of having all your logic circuits blown
simultaneously. Truly, the universe has a twisted and deeply ironic sense of
humor. Monty Python is about as funny - and as stiff - as Dick Nixon, by
comparison.
It's simply incomprehensible. It's not so astonishing, of course, that a
country could have a bad leader whose aims are nefarious on the occasions
when they are competent enough to rise to that level of intentionality.
Plenty of countries have managed that feat, especially when - as was the
case with Bush - every sort of scam is employed to steal power, and then
pure corruption and intimidation used to keep it. History is quite littered
indeed with bimbos and petty criminals of this caliber. What is harder to
explain is how a country of such remarkable achievements in other domains,
and with the capacity to choose, and in the twenty-first century no less,
allows this to happen. And then stands by silently watching for eight years
as the tragedy unfolds before their eyes, all 600 million of them, hardly
any of them even blinking.
And so, remarkably, as we mark now the fifth anniversary of the very most
tragic of these debacles, the most destructive and the most shameful -
because it was the most avoidable - the sad question of the hour is less
what is to be done about it than will anyone even notice? Not likely. And
not for very long if they do. And, most of all, definitely not enough so as
to take meaningful action to bring it to an end, even at this absurdly late
date.
But let's give credit where credit is due. This is precisely by design. This
is exactly the outcome intended by the greatest propaganda-promulgating
regime since Hermann Goering set fire to the Reichstag. It was Goering
himself who famously reminded us that, "Naturally the common people don't
want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany.
That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who
determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a
communist dictatorship. ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be
brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is
to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any
country."
Sure worked in Germany. And it worked even better here, because these guys
were so absolutely careful to avoid exposing the costs of their war to those
who could demand its end. For example, by some counts, there are more
mercenaries fighting in Iraq, at extremely high cost, than there are US
military personnel. There's only one reason for that. If the administration
implemented the draft that is actually necessary to supply this war with
adequate personnel, the public would end both the war and the careers of its
sponsors, post haste. For the same reason, this is the first American war
ever which has not only not been accompanied by a tax increase, but has in
fact witnessed a tax cut. Likewise - to 'preserve the dignity' of the dead,
of course - you are no longer permitted to see photographs of flag-draped
caskets returning to Dover Air Force Base. And the press are embedded with
forces who are also responsible for their safety, which is just a fancy way
of saying that they're so censored they make Pravda look good. It is, in
short, quite easy for average Americans to get through their day, every day,
without the war impacting their lives in any visible respect, and that is
precisely what hundreds of millions of us are doing, week in and week out.
All of this is courtesy of an administration that couldn't run a
governmental program to save its own life - but, boy, they sure as hell know
how to market stuff.
So perhaps there is no excuse, after all, for my naivete, for my
credulousness in wanting to believe that twenty-first century America might
be different enough not to follow the smallest of men - a personal failure
and a 40-year drunkard who, unlike Herr Goering's fuehrer, couldn't even
claim charismatic eloquence as the sole virtue accounting for his power - to
follow such a petulant child off the deep end of a completely unjustified
war. Perhaps Americans and American democracy are no wiser or better than
any other people or political system, even today, even after the worst
century of warfare in human history, even after the mirror-image experience
of Vietnam. Maybe the experience of Iraq hasn't even changed them, and
they'll once again follow like lemmings when led to war by pathetic
creatures such as George W. Bush, fifty years from now. Or five years from
now. Or even five months from now, as the creature d.b.a Dick Cheney tees up
a confrontation with Iran in order keep Democrats out of the White House,
and himself out of jail.
Sure, presidents and prime ministers, no less than kings and fuehrers, will
lie their countries into war. Sure, they're very good at it, and getting
better all the time. Definitely a frightened people are more prone to
stupidity than those lucky enough to contemplate in the luxury of quiet
safety. Without question, it helps an awful lot - if you're just Joe
Sixpack, out there trying to figure out international politics in-between a
long day's work, helping the kids with their algebra homework, and the
Yankee game - to have a checking-and-balancing Congress, a responsible
opposition party, and/or a critical media helping you to understand the
issues accurately, rather than gleefully capitulating to executive power at
every opportunity. But that by no means excuses a public who were
fundamentally far more lazy than they were ignorant or confused. And lazy is
one thing when you're talking about a highway bill or even national
healthcare. But when it comes to war, lazy is murder.
I don't think it took a giant leap of logic to understand that this war was
bogus from the beginning, even based on what was known at the time. The war
was sold on three basic arguments, each of which could have been easily
dismantled even then with a little thoughtful consideration.
The first was WMD, of course. So, okay, perhaps your average American didn't
know that the United States government (including many in the current
administration) had actually once supplied Saddam Hussein the materiel to
make these evil weapons, and had covered for him at the UN and elsewhere
when he used them. Although this historical myopia is very much part of the
problem, of course. Americans are so ready to denounce supposed enemies
without doing the slightest bit of historical homework to become acquainted
with the slightest bit of history to make sense of the situation. If you
don't know that the US actually canceled elections and helped assassinate a
'democratic' president in Vietnam, of course you're going to support war
there. If you don't know that the US toppled a democratically elected
Iranian government to steal the country's oil and then installed a brutal
dictatorship in its place, of course you're going to be angry at US
diplomats being held hostage. And if you don't bother to learn the true
history of Iraq, perhaps you'll find the WMD argument quite persuasive.
But, in fact, even without the historical background information, it never
made a damn bit of sense. Iraq had been pulverized by war and sanctions for
over twenty years prior to 2003. Two-thirds of its airspace was controlled
by foreign militaries. Its northern region was effectively autonomous, a
separate country in all but name. It was in no position to attack anyone.
Moreover, it hadn't attacked anyone - not the United States or anyone else.
Indeed, it hadn't even threatened to attack anyone. Shouldn't that be part
of the calculation in determining whether to go to war? Do we really want to
give carte blanche to any dry (we hope) drunkard in the White House who
today wants to bomb Norway ("They're stealing our fish!"), or tomorrow wants
to invade Burkina Faso ("They dress funny!")?
Too often, of course, the historical answer to that question has
unfortunately been yes, we apparently do want to do that. But let's consider
the massive warning signs in this case, even apart from what could be known
about the administration's lies at the time. Shouldn't it have been
enormously problematic that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? Even the
administration never had the gall to make that claim. Wasn't it transparent
to anyone that America had plenty on its plate already in dealing with the
enemy we were told we had, rather than adding a new adventure to the pile?
And why wasn't this thing selling throughout the world, or even amongst the
traitorous half of the Democratic Party in Congress? Remember how everyone
at home and abroad - yes, including the French - supported the US and its
military actions in Afghanistan only twelve months before? Shouldn't it have
been a warning sign of epic proportions that these same folks wouldn't
countenance a war in Iraq just a year later? That the administration had to
yank its Security Council resolution off the table, even after breaking both
the arms of every member-state around the horseshoe table, because it could
still only get Britain and two other patsies to lie down for this outrage,
out of a total of fifteen, and nine needed to pass?
And how about the logic of that whole WMD thing, after all? Did anyone ever
stop to think that several dozen other countries have WMD, including some
that are pretty hostile to the United States? Did anyone not remember that
the Soviets once had nearly 25,000 strategic nuclear warheads pointed in our
direction? What ever happened to the logic of deterrence? To mutually
assured destruction? And what about the mad rush to go to war, preempting
the UN weapons inspectors from doing their job? Are we really okay with the
notion that instead of 'risking' whatever would have been at risk by giving
the inspectors another six or eight weeks to finish up, we've instead bought
this devastating war down on our own heads for no reason at all? If you stop
to think about it, it makes you shudder. Which I guess explains why not too
many people stop to think about it.
The second rationale for war was the bogus linkage between Iraq and al
Qaeda. The extent and ramifications of this lie are so significant that the
White House, it was just recently revealed, squelched a Pentagon report
showing no connections between the two. Is this sort of censorship what the
Bush administration means by democracy, the remedy it's always preaching for
the rest of the world but never practicing at home? Anyhow, remember how
definitive Cheney and the rest were of this supposed al Qaeda linkage, based
pretty much entirely on a meeting between two operatives in Prague which
likely didn't even take place? Now we find out that the Department of
Defense has spent the last five years combing through a mere 600,000
documents, and found zero evidence of such a link. Not some evidence. Not
mixed evidence. Zero evidence.
But you could tell even then that they had almost nothing to go on. Christ,
the United States government itself has had far more interactions with al
Qaeda - including helping to build the beast from its inception - than one
disputed meeting between two spooks in Prague. Doesn't it seem that a
decision to go to war should hang on more than a single thread like that,
let alone a narrow and tattered one? And how many of us are down for
attacking any country right now that might have had a single meeting between
a low-level functionary and an al Qaeda representative?
Then, once again, there's the matter of that whole pesky logic thing. Pay
attention now, class. What do we know about al Qaeda? They are devoted to
religious war - jihad - in the name of replacing governments across the
Middle East with theocracies, or better yet recreating the old Islamic
caliphate stretching across the region, right? Right. Now if this vision
could have more thoroughly contradicted Saddam's agenda for a secular
dictatorship seeking regional domination on his own Stalinist terms, it is
hard to imagine how. You don't need a PhD in international politics to see
that these two actors were about as antithetical to each other as the
Republican Party is to integrity. Then again, even having one doesn't
necessarily mean you have the foggiest clue about what's going on in the
world, as Condoleeza Rice clearly demonstrated by brilliantly failing to
anticipate that Hamas would win elections she had pushed the Palestinians to
hold. For someone serving as secretary of state, this idiocy is the rough
equivalent of anyone else being shocked when a dropped bowling ball hurtles
to the ground, because they're not yet fully acquainted with the concept of
gravity. Evidently, in Texas this is what they call 'credentials'.
Lastly, Bush's little adventure in Mesopotamia was supposed to bring
democracy to the region, remember? Never mind, of course, that there has
long already been a fairly thriving Islamic democracy, right next door.
Oops! It's called Turkey. And let's not forget Mr. Bush's long-standing
devotion to democracy, as he amply demonstrated in the American election of
2000. Or as he has continually manifested by bravely and publically pushing
the Chinese to democratize. Just as he has with his pals in Egypt and
especially the family friends running Saudi Arabia, the recipient of more
American foreign aid than nearly any other country in all the world. And
let's not forget the several hundred thousand perished souls from Darfur,
whom this great champion of human rights has fought valiantly to keep alive
by... by... well, I'm sure he's done a lot behind the scenes. Sure is gonna
be hard for them to exercise their precious right to vote from the next
world, eh?
What is clear is that the reasons given to the American public for the war
in Iraq were entirely bogus. This much is already on the public record, from
the Downing Street Memos and beyond. Even if we can only speculate on why
they actually invaded - oil, glory, personal insecurity, Israel, clobbering
Democrats, Middle Eastern dominance - what we know for sure is that the
rationale fed to the public was a knowingly fabricated pack of scummy lies.
It wasn't about WMD, it wasn't about links to al Qaeda, and it sure wasn't
about democracy.
But even if we can't identify the true motivations within the administration
for invading, we can surely begin to see the costs. Probably a million Iraqi
civilians are dead. Over four million are displaced and now living as
refugees. Together, these equal a staggering one-fifth of the population of
the entire country. Meanwhile, the remaining four-fifths are living in
squalor, fear and a psychological damage so extensive that it is hard to
grasp. America has lost 4,000 soldiers, with perhaps another 30,000 gravely
wounded. Hundreds of thousands more will be scarred for life from their
experiences in the hell of Mr. Bush's war. Our military is broken and
incapable of responding to a real emergency, at home or abroad. Our economy
will sustain a blow of perhaps three trillion dollars before it is all said
and done. Our reputation in the world is in the toilet. We have turned the
Iranian theocracy into a regional hegemon. And we have massively
proliferated our own enemies within the Islamic community. That would be one
hell of an expensive war, even if the reasons given for it were legitimate.
It is nearly incomprehensible considering that they were not.
This week, a man died in France, the last surviving veteran of World War I,
a devastating conflict that - even a century later - nobody can still really
explain to this day. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, John McCain and Joe
"Make-me-SecDef-Mac-oh-please-pick-me-Mac" Lieberman parachuted into Iraq
for photo-ops to sustain the war they don't have the integrity or the guts
to abandon. Never mind that their visits had to be by surprise, and that
they stroll around the Green Zone wearing armored vests - surely the most
powerful measures of the war's success imaginable. Of course, to be fair,
we've only been at it for five years now. Perhaps after the remaining
ninety-five on McCain's agenda go by, Americans will finally be safe enough
in Iraq to announce their visits in advance.
So, Happy Anniversary, America! You put these people in charge, and then -
after seeing in explicit in detail what they were capable of - you actually
did it again in 2004! You stood by in silence watching the devastation
wrought upon an innocent people, produced in your name and financed by your
tax dollars. And you continue to do just that again, now in Year Six.
Brilliant! Put on your party hat, America. You won the prize.
You've successfully answered the musical question, "How lethally stupid can
one country be?"
_______
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson