Summation
If my opinion the war in Iraq is wrong, and does more harm than good to US interests, is wrong, what is the downside? None. If the pro-warriors are right, then six thousand years of history will have to make way for a glorious new paradigm, for the imposition of one nation's will on another, no matter how seemingly good the cause, has never worked. Is this a guarantee of failure? No. But it has auguries.
If the pro-warriors are wrong, what is the downside? Years more of war. Thousands, perhaps ultimately millions, more dead in Iraq and beyond? It could be a humanitarian disaster, and some argue it already is; that in two years we have inflicted more suffering than the previous twelve years of Saddam's strangling his nation by non-compliance with UN resolutions and denial of aid to those who needed it.
What would happen were we to leave Iraq now? Or, pull back to Kurdistan, and support Kurdish independence? We would anger Turkey, the Shias and Sunnis would likely civil war, thousands would die, and one side- likely the Shias- would eventually win, set up a theocratic state, and either be distant or hostile to us. Most of the Moslem world would hate us for the occupation.
What would happen if we plod on in Iraq? More Americans will be maimed and die. Shias will likely take power. A civil war will likely erupt. Thousands will die. We will abandon the Kurdish nationalist cause, please Turkey, and be left with a theocratic state- likely Shiite, that will distance itself from our puppeteering to have legitimacy in the Moslem world, and most will still hate us.
Neither helps us actually capture Osama bin Laden and his followers. I hope I am wrong, but history is a cruel teacher, and hates being ignored. I do not ignore it, and my evolved positions on the war are the only consistent ones with the 'known' facts of the time- they were the only ones that sought to do 'least harm'. Yes, I realize 'known' facts now could change, and WMDs may actually be in Syria, but if the burden of proof for war was high before Iraq, it will take far more to convince the once duped.
What of the humanitarian crisis that would ensue if we left? It would be no worse than what is going on now, and will continue with our presence, with the big difference American lives would not be directly involved. Civil wars are like domestic battery cases writ large. You would like to intervene- but unless a participant is willing, and underlying causes addressed, interventions are usually fruitless. Given this, and with an eye to 'legacy', Bush should just declare victory and leave. If civil war breaks out Bush can always blame 'those dang terrorists!' But foresight is not in his nature- LBJ was trammeled by his testosterone, and Bush by his paternalistic Christian missionary zeal. Neither got that war is not 'manly'. I recall the Doonesbury comics that had Bush the Elder put his manhood in a 'blind trust'.
This brings me to 'the vision thing' that dogged Bush the Elder. Because he takes actions, Bush the Younger is called a Visionary in comparison to his father. This is not true. Bush is a Fantasist, not a Visionary. Here is the difference: visions have reasonable chances of being fulfilled in set time frames- whether failed visions like Woodrow Wilson's League Of Nations, fulfilled visions like JFK's Man on the Moon, or those on drawing boards- like colonizing Mars. A fantasy has little, if no, chance of being fulfilled in a given time frame- like world peace in the foreseeable future, or the discovery of the Loch Ness Monster. Bush wants to see six thousand years of human history change because he wills it, and under the banner of his Christian Fundamentalism. Which is this closer to- vision or fantasy?
Plus, Bush's acolytes in the blogosphere encourage this psychotic break- actively wanting to be lied to, and engaging the fantasy. Look at how uncritically so many accept anything remotely positive, yet reject any mention of the piling negatives, much less the negatives. While the Left is guilty of this in reverse, it is not nearly to the degree as on the Right, because there is far more fracture and diversity in the anti-war position than the relative monolith of the pro-warriors. Why? Because a blog seemingly gives Joe Average, the Couch Potato, a platform that lifts him out of daily drudgery- marriage, mortgage, car loans, job, etc. Their life is rote, dull, with the realization they are frighteningly average, and inadequate to their dreams. Then, along comes a Holy Cause- told they are part of Big Times, doing Big Things, and if they cheerlead they can claim a part in history. Plus, there are many other Couch Potatoes who will pat him on the back, accept him in into the fraternity of the self-important and out of touch blogosphere- the vanguard of American cultural psychosis, The Boys In The Bubble, or the lumpenmenschen, as my dad would have called them.
Interestingly, Right Wing bloggers are surprisingly hypersensitive, as they ape their ill-chosen enemies on the Left. There are constant assertions of offense taken, even as it is manifest taking offense is always a willful act. Too many bloggers invest their self-worth into opinions, so when a disagreement arises it is taken as an attack on the self, rather than a faulty position. The result is endless ad hominem, distortion, and caricaturization of opinions so one argues not against specifics a reasonable moderate like me will ply, but distorted demonic generalizations that must accompany slimy liberal or evil conservative (again, me, both times). This shatters the notion the blogosphere, unlike MSM, is self-correcting. It is self-delimiting, because each 'issue' provides opportunity for a blogger to further bud off, like baby universes, with his cult, unassailable 'truths', and shrinkingly exigent delusions, into echoic Lowest Common Denominator star chambers utterly divorced from real world concerns- witness l'affaires Eason and Gannon, and their 'success's' leading to greater rancor, while stories like the Custer Battles atrocities are marginalized- until, some day soon, an Eason or Gannon will strike back, sue big blogs for libel, and a Big Chill will set in.
Yet, the most troubling aspect is how few folk on either side step back objectively and look at facts, because if they did the rationales for war- under Bush or a presumed President Gore- are gone. And here is an important point to consider- I would be against this war if Gore were President. I would have supported it had he, like Bush, trumpeted the WMD card. I would have thought him as deceitful when the truth came out. But, many people in the pro- and anti-war camps would be in exact opposite places had Gore won. Many on Right and Left are hollow mirror images- they do not see shades nor fine print, they lead with their hearts, and minds closed. Under President Gore faux liberals and Leftists would be touting the need to 'free Iraqis from terror', with utopian aeries, while faux conservatives and Rightists would be damning 'nation building', the bloated budget, and America's growing body count. Don't believe me? Look to the UK, where the Leftist Labour Party of Tony Blair are pro-warriors and Conservatives the gutless, anomic opposition.
There are some anti-warriors and Leftists who hate all America stands for, as there are Apocalyptic pro-warriors and Rightists who support 'freedom' abroad, but anti-libertarian causes at home. There are Leftists that shamelessly grandstand, such as the disingenuous networking tool that was Poets Against The War. I denuded their senseless rebuke of First Lady Laura Bush- a great friend to the arts. Neither has a grasp of American nor world history in toto, for America has committed atrocities, but so has virtually every other nation, and it is American to be for freedom anywhere, not just in places politically convenient. There are Leftists who are sincere, fear not a 'real' win, but a victory of might makes right. I disagree, to a degree, but am wary, and worry over American losses, and possible future wars in Iran or Syria. There are Rightists who are sincere, not 'in it' for corporate oil's greed, but many slavered over profit and war spoils. I do not accuse lay pro-warriors of lack of patriotism, nor malign motives, merely gullibility, and immaturity, in their inability to admit error- in going to war, then conduct of the war, as well an inability to see consequences that can do incalculable, unforeseeable harm to the nation, in ways we cannot see now, but in 2030 will seem inevitable outgrowths of our choices. The integrity of the majority of pro-warriors I do not question, merely the intelligence of their choice. Neither extreme, however, is the majority.
Thus, this piece is not a mere screed, but A Muscular Centrist Attack On The Pro-War Position. It would be just as cogent under a President Gore. Much feeling about the war reflects a person's feelings about President Bush, not the credits nor demerits of the war. Don't believe me? Return to the 1990s when Republicans in Congress decried Clinton's military adventures in the Balkans, Somalia, and Rwanda. Such petty politics are not my concern. The war's waste and faulty premises are. My position has evolved based upon the known facts at the time, and the facts supporting the war are simply not there, and never were.
You hear it argued other nations said Iraq had WMDs. First, when does other intelligence serve as the basis for American foreign policy? Second, much of that intelligence was regurged from our intelligence communities, and not accepted as reasons for war by many other nations. Pro-warriors claim WMDs are now in Syria, admitting the military had major holes in its ability to secure weapons. That is until you ask, what of those hundreds of tons of munitions a Minnesota tv news crew filmed, which subsequently disappeared? Spin control!
I am tired: of such delusion- willful or not, this war and its lies, seeing faces of young American dead on the Newshour, tales of their lives wasted on CBS News, vets who report more protection given to oil fields than commissaries, talking head pro-warriors (on the Administration's payroll or not) interviewed, and Freudianly mentioning, 'Democracy in that part of the world, where the largest reserves of oil and gas are....' (after all, without oil, Iraq is a warm Mongolia). And, this is not about isolationism, but fraud and waste, and the revanchist Couch Potato's Burden, which seeks to re-install a US puppet network. President Bush is the Typhoid Mary of geopolitics- not evil, but clueless and deadly. His lack of historical precedent is astounding, although one could argue his advisors' lack is more shocking.
This should be no surprise, because delusion, or psychosis, is not rational. And psychosis plays a part in the Left. Psychosis and self-deception persists throughout Americana- as any glimpse of top-rated tv show American Idol proves; where horrific singers actually believe they are the next Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, or Josh Groban. This psychosis leads to many Leftists' refusal to criticize Michael Moore's deceits or the shrillness of intellectual charlatans like Ward Churchill, because ends justify means, just as many Rightists refuse to criticize Rush Limbaugh's racism- his recent comments, again, on Philadelphia Eagles black quarterback Donovan McNabb, Ann Coulter's bile, or the disingenuous agitprop of Dean Esmay.
While I acknowledge free speech is a right, foisted as a reason to war, therefore cannot be hidden behind, for a right simply is (yes, technically a mutually consented fiction- ask an alien conqueror of our 'human rights'), a fundament existing to defend the offensive- Churchill's mockery and sneering at three thousand innocent dead Americans, and Esmay's ignorance of, then sneering at, manifold more innocent dead Iraqis, and their kith in Academia and the blogosphere- it also empowers people to debunk their deceits and vitriol (ask either side for the other's examples by the hundreds), even as they defend their rights to them. Such is not ameliorated by claims to higher purpose nor truths. But, in fairness, to decry the worst in the other obligates decrying the worst in their own. We can do better. Do not engage in the online nor media demonizing, merely fair criticism.
I believe in American Exceptionalism- but a saner, more realistic form, emphasizing our place as the only nation in human history consistently bettering itself since its inception, not this Christianized Shining City On The Hill bastardization of the Right and pro-warriors, and that Exceptionalism does not preclude such in other nations, as well. This is the strength of secular ethics, the evolved right and wrong recognitions, that comes from within every individual, opposed to non-secular morals, which are creeds cast down from on high, and without. Ethics support individuals doing what they will, as long as pain is not inflicted, and free will respected. Morals damn all sorts of beings, beliefs, and behaviors, because a higher power supposedly decrees it. Yet, there is one indisputable fact of American history that galls the Right. True Liberalism, and its support for civil and human rights, not its fey, shrill, Leftist mutations, has always been right, and won, on every social issue from this nation's founding: slavery, suffrage, child labor, Jim Crow, unionization, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, ending the Vietnam War, apartheid era South Africa, gay rights. I submit the calls to end this war follows in that tradition, and given the opposition's view has been wrong on all the aforementioned, and lost, the chances their view being correct now are slim and none.
I urge supporters of the anti-war cause to do whatever they feel best supports the cause- marching, protesting, organizing politically, or writing- the pen is my best tool in this cause's service. But, never let pro-warriors' false claims stand. Use this piece to shatter their claims there are no parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. Never let pro-warriors claim war is humane and being against this war racist. It is the burden of the couch potatoes to justify their Couch Potato's Burden, not yours, and they cannot factually nor humanely do it. Never let pro-warriors kow you into silence when they claim WMDs were not the primary reason for war. When they claim over a dozen other reasons refer them to my dissection of the semiotics of rhetoric. There were eight reasons- only two with partial merit. Argument to the contrary is sciolism, the blogosphere's staple. I shun such. I have made my case against the war from a common sense centrist stance, shunning the worst in the Left and Right.
Do not despair into thinking this nation is a lost cause. Amelioration is in our national DNA. Forty years ago miscegenation was a crime, now it's a snooze, and conservatives defend it, claim they were never against it, as they will decades hence of gay marriage. Progress is a helix that spirals upward. Yes, there are downturns, but as long as each downturn is higher than the last, it evidences this nation still works. Jump back in twenty-five year increments and progress is undeniable.
Frederick Douglass said, 'Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.' I urge people against the war to demand its end, to demand power, and reclaim American discourse back from the stranglehold extremists of the shrill, gutless Left and psychotic, Neolithic Right have on it. My anti-war stance stands alone, endorses nor rejects any other view, is merely a convergence on a particular point, based upon a clear consideration of fact, not desideratum. This war is antithetical, and anti-pragmatic, to promoting democracy, and thus unethical. Things like the recent release of the Richard Clarke and FAA warnings of Al Quaida in 1/01, the Custer Battles atrocities, and continuing actions by the Administration- hiding American dead, repetitions of demonstrable falsehoods- only weaken American credibility, feeding the worst fears bad things reported about our government usually are borne out as true, in time. And as The Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome let us stumble into Iraq, the same syndrome, knowing the Iraq War's reasons were fallacious, could have profound effect on our brinkmanship with Iran. Suppose they really have nukes, and plans to use them against us? I simply cannot believe a thing my President says. This, the real danger of cultural psychosis- it allows misreading history. We saw the cost of that before, when the lesson learned from World War I, to shun foreign entanglements, led to the appeasement that led to World War II.
I will end with two other voices. The first is Rudyard Kipling, from The White Man's Burden:
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
It is because of my humanitarian impulses I write, and rue Kipling's prescience. The second is from a man who knows war far more intimately than most- its costs, folly, triumphs, and echoes. Ex-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said in The Fog Of War: 'We are the strongest nation in the world today, and I do not believe we should ever apply that economic, political or military power unilaterally. If we'd followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn't have been there. None of our allies supported us. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better re-examine our reasoning.'
I can only add psychotics cannot look at their actions. Demand more from your government. End the Iraq War. A choice exists- demand they look at it, then act upon it!
