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Showing Original Post only (View all)Are we really going to pretend we were fooled into the Iraq War? [View all]
I use 'we' and 'us' throughout to mean the entity the American people. Most people reading this, here on DU, were neither fooled nor "fooled."
The American people did not, at any point, believe that Iraqi WMD posed a threat to the USA.
Just because Bush said X, Y and Z doesn't mean that most people believed X, Y and Z. Bush lied plenty... but he didn't fool that many people because the public really didn't care about the WMD. They pretended to in order to feel good about their desire for senseless murder on television.
Aside from the Fox news crowd, the American people thought that:
1) We could use a morale boost, since we hadn't really mass-murdered enough people to scratch our 9/11 itch
2) Iraqis were non-white and non-Christian and thus as good a target as anyone else, and
3) We would steal "their" oil, thereby taking something we wanted from "them."
The American people were not fooled. They were fed a rationalization, which is not being fooled, but rather encouraged into a convenient self deception. The entire RW think-tank apparatus exists to provide a flimsy intellectual facade that couldn't fool anyone who isn't lining up to be "fooled," but that serves as a moral/intellectual fig-leaf for people seeking to rationalize their base impulses. (i.e., "This study shows that cutting off welfare is really doing 'them' a favor."
I would suggest that Americans were roughly as afraid of the Iraq WMD pretext as they were enthused about the spreading Democracy pretext, which is to say not much. "We" just wanted to see Arabs beat down, and buildings leveled.
Even if everything Bush said had been true there was still no sane reason to invade Iraq. Fig leaf. Pretext.
It was an old fashioned lynching. If you can't hang the one who did it, hang a different one of "them" who is a known troublemaker.
Being the instigator of a lynching is a dark and terrible thing, and Bush owns that. But let's not pretend that the mob itself has a plausible, "we were tricked" defense.
If the American people were actually fooled they would have impeached Bush when no WMD were found, and surely not elected him in 2004. The reaction of the American people was like people seeing P. T. Barnum's mermaid. (A monkey sewed to a fish) People were not shocked by Barnum's shabby mermaid. They didn't burn down the Circus. They always knew there wasn't going to be a real mermaid. The audience seeking entertainment is accomplice to their own deception.
The ho-hum reaction to no WMD being found suggests that nobody much cared whether there were WMD. Where were the riots? Most of the American "us" knew on some level that it was hokum... a pretext to kick ass and steal oil.
Did the people turn on the war when the pretext was exposed as a fraud? No. They turned on the war after that, when it became apparent that 1) we were losing it, and 2) gas prices didn't go down.
We felt sorry for ourselves and felt entitled to murder countless Arabs and to rape an Arab nation's oil. Bush wanted to do it. Not enough people felt like doing anything to stop it.
This is close enough to a democracy that "we" shoulder the blame.
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The REAL "know-nothings" accused "us" of being a bunch of ignorant, naive "know-nothings"
Proud Liberal Dem
Feb 2013
#67
i know a lot of people in the same boat. and people have blindspots- you see a lot of
bettyellen
Feb 2013
#76
I did, too. I wasn't really into politics at the time and though I hated Bush, et al,
gateley
Feb 2013
#27
Not me. I'm only surprised the whole region didn't melt down worse than it has
TheKentuckian
Feb 2013
#4
Snow job by the media walking hand in hand w Bush. We weren't fooled by that
emulatorloo
Feb 2013
#6
August 2003 - 70% of Americans still believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11
Douglas Carpenter
Feb 2013
#10
Yes, OP thinks that everyone must believe the same things that the OP does.
stevenleser
Feb 2013
#11
at least 80% of the people I know have never heard of PNAC. even now. it's sad.
bettyellen
Feb 2013
#92
Yawn - Virtually the entire world thought that Iraq likely had WMD. You can pretend that this wasnt
stevenleser
Feb 2013
#58
The US had, has, and will continue to have WMD - If that justifies an invasion we're fucked.
Xipe Totec
Feb 2013
#53
I said nothing about justifying an invasion or anything else that you wrote. nt
stevenleser
Feb 2013
#57
According to the various UN Resolutions, it would have in Iraq's case. However...
stevenleser
Feb 2013
#65
I think the point is that many of us accepted the Official Story because we wanted a war.
Warren Stupidity
Feb 2013
#80
There are some who wanted that, yes. That doesnt explain the rest of the world believing WMD were in
stevenleser
Feb 2013
#83
I certainly don't believe Bush was involved in any way with September 11 - That strikes me as the
Douglas Carpenter
Feb 2013
#34
I think you mean the NY Times. They are the ones who printed that misleading article whose headline
stevenleser
Feb 2013
#61
Both the NY Times and USA Today were involved in participating in studying the recount
Samantha
Feb 2013
#69
Here it is. I think this NY Times article is the one to which you are referring
stevenleser
Feb 2013
#64
I think that is because the realization was a slow one. The UN Weapons inspector reports of 3/7/03
stevenleser
Feb 2013
#13
It certainly had been planned. In Paul O'Neill's THE PRICE OF LOYALTY, he says that
raccoon
Feb 2013
#44
Excellent book and I believe that incident happened at the first cabinet meeting
Samantha
Feb 2013
#96
Yep. And, not a few "liberal" Democrats jumped on the "Bring it on" bandwagon to another dumb war.
Tierra_y_Libertad
Feb 2013
#21
I hope Ms. Maddow lists those Democrats that claimed to be "fooled" starting with Tom Dashiell.
rhett o rick
Feb 2013
#23
I guess you forgot how the American people marched in record breaking protests.
joshcryer
Feb 2013
#25
I was out protesting and then I got really sick so I was in the hospital after it started up....
WCGreen
Feb 2013
#26
Yes, large swaths of the American people were fooled; but what about members of Congress?
Martin Eden
Feb 2013
#97
Bush conflated Al Qaeda with the Palestinians who are bombing Israel &that's why his lie worked
Kolesar
Feb 2013
#52
Correct and that is because on March 7th, 13 days beforehand, we knew for sure from the Reports of
stevenleser
Feb 2013
#84
"We were duped" sure beats taking responsibility for the deaths of 100s of thousands of people.
Tierra_y_Libertad
Feb 2013
#82
"in order to feel good about their desire for senseless murder on television"
Martin Eden
Feb 2013
#87