What Happened To The Post-War Dream?
Jun 30 '05 (Updated Sep 26 '08)
The Bottom Line Some thoughts on the recent comments of Bush and Rumsfeld
"Should we shout? Should we scream? What happened to the post-war dream?" - Roger Waters, The Final Cut
There’s the odd occasion when you actually feel a pang of pity for George W. Bush, when you temporarily forget the blood of thousands of human lives on his hands and see a little lost boy standing terrified in the spotlight, like a 5 year-old in his first nativity play. Poor George – He really is such a colossal open goal. The tide of world ( and, increasingly, American ) opinion flows firmly against him and his repugnantly self-serving, dollar-eyed administration. Yet, in a desperate bid to shore up rapidly dwindling domestic support for the endlessly disastrous war in Iraq, some cretin has allowed him to go on TV and make an address to the American people, in which the daft bugger has provided more barrels of fuel to the critics who would burn him at the stake.
The speech is generally unremarkable; full of the usual beatific biblical bleating about "freedom" and "evil" and "the enemies of freedom" who are "evil" because they are "enemies" etc. etc. But in one sense, you have to wonder if there are people writing Bush's speeches who are deliberately trying to sabotage him. How else does one explain how, like a clueless gangland assassin, he has shot himself so dramatically in the foot by repeatedly stressing how the war is a logical response to the 9/11 terror attacks? Iraq is, he tells us, "the latest battlefield in the war against terrorism," and that "the only way our enemies will succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11th".
There's nothing quite like reminding a nation of its greatest trauma when trying to justify an entirely unrelated war, is there? Even if while doing it you inadvertantly draw attention to the fact that you have singularly failed to catch the man widely believed to be responsible. Is it me, or has this point been loudly raised, clarified and corrected a countless number of times, not least by the various intelligence services in the US, UK and elsewhere? Shouldn't somebody have had a word in his ear by now, or at least drawn him a picture?
Point out to me the Iraqis amongst the nineteen individuals who carried out the 9/11 hijackings, fifteen of whom were Saudis. Read again the findings of the 9/11 commission - "no collaborative relationship", I believe were the words. Look at the part in chapter 2 where it finds that Osama Bin Laden, Bush's favourite fear-inducing supervillain, had actually sponsored anti-Ba'ath party muslim fighters in Kurdistan and tried to recruit them for his own Islamist army. Or, if you don't hold much truck with the 9/11 report, as some don't, there are always the numerous whistleblowers in the US and UK intelligence services who have stated the war was planned well in advance of 9/11. Or the oft-repeated but still relevant point that Iraq did not possess a single weapon of mass destruction.
The search for WMD's ended quietly and embarrasingly in January without finding so much as the remnants from a mildly offensive fart. A war launched on what many already believed at the time to be either a blatantly shameless and cynical lie, or a gross error based on deeply flawed intelligence information, stretches on with no hint of any resolution or lasting peace. Where is this freedom and promise of a bright new future that we are supposed to have brought to the people of Iraq, exactly?
Most areas of the country remain without infrastructure, with communities forced to pay black market prices for essential goods. The US budget alone for Iraq aid so far has been around the $5bn mark, but the average Iraqi simply isn't seeing any difference. The head-in-the-clouds hope that the handover of sovereignty would lead to new, legitimate government, isolate the extremists and unite the populace has not, totally unsurprisingly, come to pass. The violence is, in fact, increasing and intensifying, almost two years after Bush's laughable declaration of the end of major combat operations.
Estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq range from a conservative 15,000 to an astonishing 100,000. Scores of men, women and children are being murdered on an almost daily basis, their bodies ripped apart and mutilated from roadside bombings. In the last week alone over 40 Iraqis have been killed in attacks on police stations and a restaurant - This is now so common the world hardly notices anymore. Just another few Iraqis dead. It certainly hardly notices the myriad horrific ways in which Allied troops have been wounded and killed ( around 1,700 deaths so far), due to the military's tendency to suppress such day-spoiling information. Soldiers without limbs and eyes, screaming from third-degree burns, horrible lifelong scarring, and coming home in rows of flag-draped coffins doesn't really make for the kind of news reports to inspire confidence and patriotism.
No, we get that from our leaders. And what encouraging noises do we hear from the spokesmen for the indestructible, incorruptible beacon of efficient democratisation that is the Allied forces? Well, while Dick Cheney had apparently hit his head somewhere and dizzyingly stated that the violence was "in its last throes", the cancerous walking tumour the world has come to know as Donald Rumsfeld ( a man whose death I would openly celebrate ) tells us this week that the "insurgency", ( or "civil war" to you and me ), "may last for ten or twelve years". Ten or twelve years. Let's think about that for a moment.
How many thousands more is that, exactly? Is there a top limit on the bodycount? Do we expect the Iraqi insurgents, after twelve years, to have simply got used to the situation, thrown in the towel, and gone home to watch TV? What kind of people are they, these muslims who are somewhat irked with American foreign policy? Do they give up easily in the face of a superior force? Is staying alive and living a quiet life more important to them than fighting for what, rightly or wrongly, they believe is a cause worth blowing themselves and others to pieces for? Hmm. It's a poser, isn't it?
Bush's comment that the Iraq war is "vital to the security of our country", doubtlessly scribbled down during his evening bath in a few gallons of crude, may not take its place alongside such inspiring utterances as, "More and more of our imports are coming from overseas", or "This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating", but it is just as awe-inspiringly stupid. Is he saying that he is winning the war against terrorism in Iraq? That any terrorists in Iraq are now no longer a threat to the US? That by maintaining an inflammatory and increasingly overwhelmed miltary presence, he is helping to contain the terrorists? How, exactly? Explain it to us, George, we're all ears. How many terrorists, do you think, will be deterred and discouraged by this? How many muslims who were previously just angry at US foreign policy will now have actively signed up to some extremist faction? And I'm only, of course, talking about the mere presence of military force, not any episodes of behaviour. Would it be waspish to mention the instances of Allied troops p!ssing happily into the eyes of the Islamic world with their Abu Ghraib photoshoots? Ah, right. Thought so. They were only "under orders", after all.
There have always been many reasons to dislike Bush. His inarticulacy, his irksome voice, his doubtless-shady connections with the oil/energy industry, the casual hacking away of American civil liberties he has presided over, and the fact he has been cursed with a face like a haunted cave in Poland. But I have always at least tried to see the good in him, to try and believe that behind the facile religious rhetoric lies an essentially good man, who clearly has limited intelligence and ability but at least believes he is trying to do good. Although I've always vocally disagreed with the reasons for going to war in Iraq, no one is suggesting that troops simply pull out now and leave them to it, merely that all of this could have, and should have been avoided.
But I have been stunned by the sheer arrogance and monumental stupidity that has been displayed in the last week, and if Bush's approval ratings over Iraq are now at the lowest they've ever been, he and his administration fully deserve it. He is slowly but surely erasing any goodwill or benefit of the doubt he has been afforded with this breathtakingly cocksure you-can't-make-an-omelette-without-breaking-some-eggs outlook. Bush's contemptible assertion that what is happening in Iraq now is a "necessary sacrifice" is an insult aimed at the remaining low-wattage brains who still think Bush is the righteous crusader for peace and freedom he would like us to think.
Related:
Is The War On Terror The Phantom Menace?
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Member: Steve
Location: England
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