Originally written February 25th, 2005
‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.’
- Frederick Douglass
War is horrible, among the worst of all human actions, yet there are times it is just, called for, and necessary. In American history the Union cause against the Confederacy was just, ennobled by the drive against slavery. So were the Allies in World War II, against Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and Fascism. However, not many wars can claim to be relatively clear cut as those two. There are Southern apologists who cling to the myth ‘State’s Rights’ caused for the Rebellion, and those who mitigate Axis aggression by citing the harsh Treaty of Versailles as ultimate catalyst.
Those claims are easily seen through as the ‘State’s Rights’ the South started war over were the rights to slavery, not local county election minutiae. In this regard, the Right Wing attempt to gloss over slavery as the cause of the Civil War is alarmingly like disingenuous Left Wingers who claim to be Pro-Choice, yet find it difficult to say the word abortion. As a moderate and centrist I have no difficulty stating the Civil War was fought over slavery and I am Pro-Abortion. As for mitigating Axis aggression, while I agree there was blame to be spread around, the bulk falls in Axis laps, lest one seek first causes all the way back to the Big Bang (or whatever preceded that, if that was!).
I argue the war in Iraq is not justified by the reasons given for war, its poor conduct, and re-igniting one of the worst elements of past American history- the paternalistic, racist White Man’s Burden, noxious progeny of the Manifest Destiny ideal to justify American continental imperialism. I argue the basis of this policy, worse than merely being racist, is delusional- clinically psychotic, guided and suckled by an utter break from reality.
Let me be up front: I have never gone to war, and would be 4F due to legal blindness. However, I have been in hand-to-hand combat, the most rudimentary form of war, as a teenaged city street gangster. I have seen people maimed and killed up close. Those for the war effort have, by and large, like me, never gone to war, yet lack the real visceral understanding of the organized and sanctioned murder war is, even its miniaturized simulacrum of gang warfare. I am a middle aged, married, heterosexual, white male; a religious agnostic from poor working class immigrant roots and in over three decades of work have soared to the lower middle class. My father died a sixth grade dropout, my mother the only in my family who completed college. I am a poet, critic, and writer of assorted stripes who has crafted one of the most popular poetry and literature websites, Cosmoetica, despite being non-profit and unaligned with any noxious arts organizations.
Politically, I am a moderate, ex-Democrat, and political independent. In the last three Presidential elections I voted for Ralph Nader, because Democrats betrayed the working class and became a party bereft of ideas, and lacking courage. While the Republican Party has many ills- homophobia, racist tokenism, an unlimited ability to prostitute itself to Wall Street- no one can accuse them of lacking ideas (most bad and aimed at igniting a second Gilded Age), nor of standing up for them. They may be big, bad wolves, but they know what they are. Democrats are shivering lambs, and cowardice- more than bigotry, murder, or incest- is the lone human trait globally reviled. Yet, I put the blame for where the country is in the laps of the cowardly and hypocritical electorate, not politicians. Politics has always been, and will always be, amongst the most base human endeavors, for it consists of a few elitists exercising power over the generally benighted masses, through assented deceit. I do not shrink from the term ‘benighted’, nor buy into the political platitude of ‘the American public’s wisdom’. Were that true Madison Avenue could not have thrived. I acknowledge showman P.T. Barnum as the shrewdest, most honest observer of populist American ignorance with his immortal apothegm, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’ We live in a boobocracy. Doubt that? Look at the hausfrau zombies, welfare perverts, and clueless losers on Oprah, Jerry Springer, and Judge Judy.
Acknowledging Lowest Common Denominator self-interest has slowed down the wheels of progress from time immemorial, I also, sadly, acknowledge democracy, or republicanism, are the best forms of government yet devised. Somehow, this seems to bespeak our specific lack, for I can imagine advanced extraterrestrial societies snickering at our primitivism, and haughtiness over it. There is something retrogressive about the current state of nation-states, yet the only likely successor to this form of society in the next century or two might be corpostates; yet that is too scary to contemplate. While democracy is a noble goal, as I am a true civil libertarian (not a corporate shill from the Libertarian Party), who is pro-just about every conceivable right from gun ownership and polygamy to abortion and gay marriage, and all betwixt, I am not sold on the idea all societies (human or not) will inevitably choose this path. This is not an endorsement of non-democracies, merely recognition of historical facts.
I support a nation’s right to self-defense, sometimes preemptively, and was initially a hesitant supporter of the Iraqi war effort, because, given the President’s track record of deceit- the 2000 Election, although I realize his crooks were merely better than Gore’s- i.e.- he stole the election fair and square, and incompetence- 9/11’s three thousand dead, especially now knowing within five days of taking office Richard Clarke and the FAA warned the Administration of Al Quaida, only to be marginalized, the infamous 8/01 PDB, the unfinished mess in Afghanistan that has left it a narco-state, Asia’s answer to Colombia.
I knew Saddam Hussein had been sold technology for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in the 1980s, by Ronald Reagan’s Administration, when he was a ‘good dictator’, opposing ‘evil dictator’ Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. WMDs were not an issue to us when used on Iraqi civilians (the Kurds), nor Iranian soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. I knew France and Russia had sold Iraq WMD technology more recently. It seemed a no-brainer he had WMDs, and while I doubted he would use it in anything other than a defensive capacity after the Gulf War, the fact he had it and showed a willingness to use it seemed a supportable rationale to oust Saddam. It also seemed plausible the claims Saddam was seeking uranium from all over the world were true, and while I thought then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s invocation of ‘mushroom clouds’ over America was borderline hysterical, given her zero credibility post-9/11, you could never know, it’s better to be safe than sorry, etc. Also, I, like many Americans after 9/11, had lingering suspicions Saddam had at least a thumb nail, if not hand, in that.
Add in it was the United Nations, noted bastion of waste, fraud, sloth, and rabid anti-Americanism, telling us they could de-fang Saddam, well, I was not in a mood to trust those folks with American security either. Then came the greatest propaganda campaign of the post-World War II era. For months leading up to the Iraq War’s start, the American public was told, over and over, we had proof of WMDs- the most emphasized piece of agitprop. It was directly stated and hinted at many times by the President, Vice-President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Rice, and members of the military and intelligence communities. The clincher was State Secretary Colin Powell’s near-Adlai Stevenson moment at the UN, bringing forth photographs ‘proving’ Saddam had WMDs, as surely as the Cubans, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, were building nuclear missile silos. It is a measure of the continuing deceptions by the pro-warriors, and the MTV era ease with which the public forgets, that the agitprop of 2002-03 has been dismissed by Right Wingers as rearguard Left Wing revisionism.
This is a direct, outrageous assault on truth, and has only recently been re-countered by the confirmation hearings on Rice for State Secretary, and the unearthing of her histrionic invocations of doomsday unless we went to war against Iraq. Yet, I fell for it, along with many cautious skeptics, with the proviso, if wrong we would acknowledge it. History proves our intelligence was wrong. There were no WMDs, and surprise, surprise- the UN inspections, ongoing until the war- were actually working! Saddam had been de-fanged years earlier, and was bluffing. Why he would do so, and risk war? The answer is obvious, as journalist James Campion states in Manifest Destiny Made Easier Through Modern Chemistry:
People paid good money to practice journalism still possess the stones to ask why the hell Hussein kept refusing to reveal he had no weapons, even with the threat of US aggression. The answer is simple. Either lie to the UN or risk letting the Iranians know he was a paper tiger and take him out. Americans seem to care about women and children and hospitals and taking prisoners. This is of little concern to Iranians. It was a fair trade off. Hussein knew, as the CIA, that if it were the Iranians pouring over the border, the grand poobah’s head would have been on a spike, instead of getting a lice exam on CNN.
Still, after toppling Saddam, we could have avoided the mess we are in had we not allowed looting to go on, set up quick elections, and backed an independent Kurdistan.
Then, problems hit- Saddam was missing for months, Shia-Sunni tensions rose, America’s occupation looked less like a liberation, insurgencies rose. There was ultra-protection afforded Iraqi oil fields, while American military commissaries went unprotected, and scandalous tortures at Abu Ghraib prison- prompting the question of which was worse, the torture, or the hubris to think it could be gotten away with, as it was photographed?
The rise of the blogosphere, due to the 2004 Presidential Election, gave the President a whole new area of fawning acolytes willing to disseminate pro-war agitprop, with a rallying cry against the supposedly anti-Bush Mainstream Media (MSM), even though all the television networks, Washington Post, New York Times, and other ‘liberal media’ could not run quickly enough to get into bed with the Administration’s deceits; the term ‘embedded media’ becoming one of the most apt and detestable terms to spring from the war. It is notable Abu Ghraib only came to light for an American soldier whistleblower, not ‘hard journalism’ by the media. I have long warned against the conservative media bias, but it outdid itself, hoodwinking those already in power into thinking those out of power were oppressing and misinforming the public, even as it supported their actions overwhelmingly. Embedding necessarily destroys objectivity for uncritical adulation, akin to the Stockholm Syndrome, occurs whenever one commiserates with others. The myth of journalistic objectivity was shown to be just that, as it became an excuse to refrain from real reportage. Of course, the MSM does not care for facts, only image, the patina of celebrity, which Lowest Common Denominator masses have pop culturally embraced. Their problem is not bias, but its opposite, anomy- lack of focus. Image cheaply fills time. This slide began with JFK, continued through Reagan and Clinton (the only Democrat since JFK to understand this), and hit new heights under Bush.
As for the actual war? Although Bush declared Mission Accomplished! a little more than a month after the war’s start, it became obvious he miscalculated by not sending enough troops, against the advice of generals, in favor of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. We lost sight of our goals in the Afghan War, as Osama bin Laden, three and a half years post-9/11, is nowhere near being caught. We toppled the Taliban, which protected Al Quaida, from power, but as manpower and resources were diverted to Iraq, Afghanistan veered from the path we hoped. Taliban elements reformed and are waging guerilla warfare, while tribal warlords the Taliban displaced reassumed local power, despite the US-backed puppet government of Hamid Karzai, as Afghanistan has become the major world poppy/heroin maker.
Then, more setbacks in Iraq- whole cities ‘liberated’, at a cost between ten and twenty thousand to one hundred thousand Iraqi lives, the bulk innocents. There have been between ten and twenty thousand American injured, and closing in on fifteen hundred dead. Many casualties could have been minimized or avoided had money been spent on properly equipping American vehicles with armor, and American soldiers with protective gear. In the year and a half between 9/11 and the war Rumsfeld, in near-infinite arrogance, never thought it necessary to properly equip American vehicles, for the war would be over in a heartbeat, like the Gulf War. The difference was that was not a war of occupation, but of limited aims. Then came the back door draft as thousands of National Guardsman and other military combatants sought to return to civilian life after their terms of service were up, only to be told the government was invoking obscure clauses to keep them enlisted against their will. There were mini-scandals over measly death benefits for survivors, and lack of proper medical care for the wounded. Perhaps worst of all, was the Bush Administration’s craven attempts to hide the increasing American body count with flag draped coffins arriving home under cover of darkness, as if the dead bore shame. Even in Vietnam there was recognition of the costs to our actions.
That is not the case now, part of the growing psychosis of pro-warriors- this split from the reality of what is going on has led us to this point in history, as well where we can go from here. Do not get me wrong- I have ‘conservative’ opinions on many things, although I would argue they are pragmatic; being pro-death penalty, anti-gun control, pro-balanced budget, and would decimate all but the most effective government programs, which bleed this nation of wealth in a variety of pork barrel schemes that have demonstrably failed. It is the Right Wing, in further severance from reality, that has foisted the great domestic deceit of our time- the Social Security crisis, even as it is the most successful government program of the last century
I also denounce the spineless and cowardly Left Wing, unfortunately recently embodied by disgraced, fraudulent, Colorado University professor Ward Churchill, a relic from the 1960s Communist radicalism, and Native American poseur, who proclaimed the people who died on 9/11 were ‘little Eichmann’s’, presumably because they were capitalists. I recall, right after 9/11, having an email argument with another repugnant Left Wing artiste type who also claimed on 9/11 ‘the chickens came home to roost’, even being incapable of his own filth, needing to channel Malcolm X. I lambasted his stupidity, and asked what café waitron, or secretary, ever oppressed an Arab or Moslem?
But, if the cowardly, anomic Left is bad, the deceitful, psychotic Right is worse, for they hold power, and their delusions are getting people killed in large numbers. I have always favored competence over ideology, but this Administration embodies the worst aspects of both those ideals- marrying a slate of incompetent careerist bureaucrats (evidence of which is that we now know 9/11 was a preventable occurrence) with a Manifest Destiny-like zeal that combines the worst of the White Man’s Burden with the worst of Christian Apocalysm, admixed with a missionary fervor to ostensibly ‘spread democracy’, yet never pausing to ask three fundamental questions:
- What form of democracy are we speaking of? American democracy- which still has yet to fully enfranchise black voters? European socialist democracy- with all its waste? Latin American Banana Republicanism? Dictated democracies like those in Africa- including Egypt, which has had elections for a century, yet no truly free elections, lest they would vote for a theocracy overnight? Apartheid democracy, as in Israel, or sham democracies- in Russia and former Soviet states?
- What price are we willing to pay for it? Not just endebting future generations, but in casualties- be they a crippled generation of men, or in body count- is 5,000 enough? 25,000? 50,000? Not to mention the dead Iraqis. Add in the loss in American trust and prestige. Are we willing to democratize the Moslem world if it heralds a long slide off center of the world stage?
- What does this war really have to do with getting Osama bin Laden, and the supposed War on Terror? Do we really want to conduct an endless war that resembles the lost, and swiftly forgotten, War on Drugs, or the decades-long Indian Wars of the 19th Century? Will we recognize our role as Ugly American exploiters, and the impact decades of our mainly oil-based exploitation had in fostering this hatred that surpasses even that of the Yankee Go Home! movements of 20th Century Latin America? And will we recognize there are other ways to combat than waving the Big Stick, and that few terrorists are fat- meaning food and healthcare may be better ways to win friends than cozying up to dictators?
I do not accuse the lay pro-warriors of lack of patriotism, nor malign motives, merely gullibility, and immaturity, in their inability to admit error- first in going to war, then the conduct of the war, in Iraq, as well an inability to see the consequences of their actions and how it will impact the world’s future. I am not anti-war in general, just anti-this misguided effort, a bad war, with the potential to outstrip the horrid folly of the Vietnam War. I recognize while it was President George W. Bush that led us into this mess, all his predecessors- from Richard Nixon on, share blame, for we would not be there had our nation weaned itself from our oil addiction after the 1973 Arab Oil Crisis.
I will touch on the role of oil in this conflict later, but want to end this portion of the essay by setting up the rest of the argument against the war in Iraq.
- We blundered into this war because of thirty years of false analogies of all US military actions to our failure in Vietnam.
- This Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome led us to ignore real parallels between both wars, which led us to this point.
- Iraq is a diversion from the real War on Terror, and its outcome will likely do more damage than good, as it already has.
- The Iraq War let loose the worst elements of the American political soul redux, such as racist, reactionary, retrogressive revanchism, Manifest Destiny, the Ugly American stereotype, and the White Man’s Burden- in a new form, the Couch Potato’s Burden.
- The reasons given for the Iraq War were not true, vastly overstated, and the revisionism of the Right Wing to deny WMDs were the major, and only make or break, reason for war, are false.
- I hope this essay can become a template to help argue the Anti-War cause against the incessant Orwellian revisionism and lies that are fundaments needed to propagate war, regardless of whether your opposition is based in conservative or liberal politics, or mere pragmatism and a rejection of deceit and delusion, as mine is. I offer specific talking points, often apolitical, and provide sloganeering hooks to win converts.
Unfortunately, the need to speak out against this war grows with each day, as more and more Americans are dying for no justifiable reason. The time has long passed, in our Balkanized Age, where a single figure, like newsman Walter Cronkite, could stand up and declare a war, like Vietnam, a failure, and immediately impact the American public opinion. Still, I hope this essay will be a palliative for the cause of sanity, rightness, and restored American dignity.
