Deadly “disassembling”

This week the nation’s vice president instructed the Air Force Academy’s graduating class (in fundamentalist theology, one assumes) "to hunt down the terrorists before they can hit us again.” Catch that? “Before they” -- and “again.” Then, to quell the suspense, he declared “we are winning” the war on terrorism. “After 9/11, this nation made a decision. We will not sit back and wait for future attacks. We will prevent those attacks by taking the fight to the enemy."

After all this time and after, even, all the official disclaimers, Dick is still out there, on autopilot, demagoguing a connection between 9/11 and "taking the fight to the enemy" in Iraq. There’s demagoguery, and then there’s shameless demagoguery.

Not long before Cheney’s discredited prattle the secretary of state predicted that "as Iraqis see their interests … represented in the political process, the insurgency will lose steam." Lose steam? Has Condi seen a newspaper lately? Or perhaps this? There have been 1,851 coalition troop deaths, 1,667 Americans, 89 Britons, 10 Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 25 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of June 2, 2005.

And most of these deaths occurred after we accomplished our mission -- the one we’re still winning, though we’re rapidly losing, but which will prevent the next. Vintage BushThink.

The real experts, the anonymous ones deep inside the administration with actual Middle East expertise, speak on occasion and say rather blunt things, like, "We are losing control." But they’re just the experts. The ones who play experts, the duplicitous ideologues like Dick and Condi who speak for George W. Bush publicly, are more like the Holiday Inn Express guy.

The reality on Iraqi ground is fixed and dilated but beyond the ken of these child-like fibbers. Their addiction to pushing fantasy and public befuddlement is beyond hope. There is hope, however, that the American public at large can face up to what the world knows, and what we look plain foolish denying.

The U.S. is an occupying force in an alien land with an even more alien culture. That reality -- versus the “liberator” fallacy -- is by now clear enough to have caused some perceivable shift in domestic opinion. But there’s a deeper reality that Americans need to accept in place of the phony “war on terrorism” demagoguery that has sustained the all too substantial domestic support for the U.S. occupation, support that would dry up overnight once the reality is accepted. And it’s a simple one.

Iraqis are resisting the occupation out of nationalism, not a fondness for terrorism -- just as the Vietnamese resisted American occupation out of nationalism, not a fondness for communism. U.S. policy makers didn’t “get it” then, and they deliberately don’t get it now.

As journalist and Harvard University fellow Molly Bingham reported in the Boston Globe about the grim education she received in Iraq: "I met Shia and Sunnis fighting together, women and men, young and old. I met people from all economic, social, and educational backgrounds.… The original impetus for almost all of the individuals I spoke to was a nationalistic one."

There is this similar report from the U.S. Project on Defense Alternatives: "Strong majorities in the Sunni and Shiite community oppose the occupation -- and significant minorities have registered support for attacks on US troops. 'What drives these attitudes more than anything else,' says the report’s author, Carl Conetta, 'are nationalism, the coercive practices of the occupation, and the collateral effects of military operations.'"

Nationalism is a prideful force that paradoxically thrives on oppression. The more an outsider oppresses it through the foolish process of occupying its disciples, the more the outsider feeds it. Again, the American public learned this simple lesson once, though the lesson took 10 agonizing years to learn. This time around, can’t we settle for two?

… and then permanently banish the addle-brained ideology that has cost the lives of 1,667 Americans, 89 Britons, 10 Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 25 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians -- and God only knows how many innocent Iraqis.

Comments

[Nomial]

Never forget this was all about oil. The mistake Saddam made was to let in the russians and the french into his oil patch.

[Marblex]

Not to mention Saddam's not so veiled threat to switch reserve currencies to the Euro. Never forget it's about $$. They wasted no time looting the U.S. Treasury (they had to pay off the airlines for cooperating about 9/11) and then Iraq. Which national treasury will they plunder next?

Fortunately, there is an growing opposite force in South America. Pray that the humanist dialogues and doctrines being engaged/practiced/launched spread like wildfire. The only countenence to bad ideas is good ideas. We have seen the end of the road for unhinged, unbridled capitalism. It ends unhappily for 99% of the human world. What is the prize? A neon sign emblazoned across the survivor's privatized sky reading: "CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE WON. WANT TO PLAY AGAIN?"

It's time for a quantum leap for humanity. Do we have the stuff to make it?

[John]

'What drives these attitudes more than anything else,' says the report’s author, Carl Conetta, 'are patriotism, the coercive practices of the occupation, and the collateral effects of military operations.'"

If you put it that way it would elicit more sympathy on the part of the reader. After all, what's the difference between nationalism and patriotism?

[matt]

Since everyone is reminiscing about Nixon this week, let's not forget that Georgie Boy is following in his footsteps in this war.

Nixon was elected using rhetoric about having a plan to end the war in Vietnam. More than half of the final deaths of US forces in Vietnam (the Marines called them permanent routines)came after his election and after he and that preeminent war criminal, Dr. K worked their magic in southeast Asia.

George made his proclamation in front of a banner that said "Mission Accomplished." The irony of it is that he didn't mean that the war was over and our troops would be returning home. The "mission" to which he was referring was his mission to topple Saddam and to get his hands on the oil revenues from that country. A nice by-product of that mission was the complete emasculation of the American media and the total silencing of the American antiwar movement.

He was correct. His mission has been accomplished beyond his wildest dreams and neither he nor his accomplice, Dick Cheney, will be held accountable for any of the tragedies they have caused American and Iraqi and Afghani families. Not for a long, long time.

This should be a reminder to people the next time they think of putting a Dick in the White House.