Five Years in Iraq, and Some Accounting--An Indictment of George "Mission Accomplished" Bush

[civildisoBDence]

Five years into the costly Iraq War, the most compelling question is still the initial one: why? Why invade a nation that hadn't attacked us and didn't pose a credible threat to us? Why set the reckless and arrogant precedent of unilateral, pre-emptive war?

The Bush administration has trundled out a series of reasons.

The initial reasoning went like this: Saddam Hussein is working on weapons of mass destruction that could threaten American interests. This reasoning was backed by Condi Rice's statement that we don't want the proof of Hussein's WMD to be a "mushroom cloud" and Dick Cheney's theory that even a 1% chance of a WMD attack justified invading and occupying Iraq. Five years on, it's become clear that the threat was significantly and intentionally exaggerated. As for Cheney's "1% Rule," such absolutism and arrogance cannot be taken seriously; can you imagine a world where every nation followed that doctrine?

A second reason involved the suggestion, made repeatedly by administration officials, that Iraq had some connection to al Qaeda and/or the 9/11 attacks. This suggestion has also been repudiated. Saddam's secular Baathist Party was hostile to the sectarian fundamentalism of al Qaeda and vice-versa. No credible connection between Iraq and either 9/11 or al Qaeda has ever been uncovered.

A third reason is Bush's alleged crusade to spread freedom and democracy to the Arab world. This is either the height of naivete, or the height of cynicism. Only a naive misunderstanding of how democracy takes hold and develops would lead one to honestly believe it could be imposed militarily on a fractious nation like Hussein's Iraq. Only the most brazen cynicism would lead one to use freedom and democracy as rhetorical flourishes masking a cold economic and geopolitical calculation.

Considering the political costs of this invasion and occcupation---the elevation of Iran to regional supremacy, the sundering of the fragile truce between Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, the destabilization of the region and its oil exporting capacity, the loss of America's moral authority, the erosion of American civil liberties---shouldn't we be revisiting the real reasons behind what many consider the greatest strategic American foreign policy mistake ever?

And why do we as a nation continue to ignore the costs of this war for the Iraqi people? The conservative tally of civilian deaths five years in is approaching 90,000. The number of casualties is probably five to ten times that number. Between two and four million Iraqis have been displaced. Countless millions have been psychologically traumatized in Iraq, and an entire generation has been denied the progress and prosperity the war has delayed and destroyed.

Consider those human costs, and the real reason for the invasion takes on a truly disgusting character.

The real reason for the invasion was to establish a front on which to fight al Qaeda and jihadism far from our own shores. We chose Iraq as our battlefield, not our enemy. President Bush has said as much, with hardly a ripple of reaction: "We will fight the terrorists overseas so we do not have to face them here at home." We lost 3000 people on 9/11 when a conspiracy planned and executed by Saudis pierced our homeland. Now Iraq has lost 90,000+ and has been set back decades in its development while Bush literally kisses the cheeks and holds the hands of the Saudis, who, along with Exxon, enjoy unprecedented profitability.

Meanwhile, we've suffered 4000 deaths and 40,000 serious injuries, and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the eventual monetary cost of the war at three trillion dollars.

Can any reasonable person justify that kind of disproportionate and wrongly-targeted response?

One man who continues to justify it is George Bush, whose ill-conceived and reckless rush to war had at least one silver lining: the president, absent from combat when he had the chance, got to land a real live fighter jet onboard a real live aircraft carrier.

Mission accomplished, sir. That was one expensive photo op.

http://newsprism.wordpress.com">Newsprism

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[RFK_Democrat]

1. I think most funds went to his cod-piece.

That thing was huge.

[civildisoBDence]

3. Then there was the cost of the walnuts and sausage that went inside the codpiece

Great Stephen Wright line, btw.

[bushmeister0]

2. Yes, it's truly mindboggling

And the media just goes on like nothing has happened. How many times do you see or hear people like William Kristol on the various talking-head shows and NPR being asked for their expert opinion on Iraq? I mean, all these neocon boneheads are still out there being called upon to continue to spin their ever shifting rationale for going to war and their outrageously off predictions on what would follow an invasion.

If you or I were so completly and totally wrong about EVERYTHING as Kristol has been no one would bother asking us anything ever again, yet there's Kenneth "cakewalk" Adelman on NPR's TOTN a few months back talking about his good friend the late Jeane Kirkpatrick and I'm like . . . why is guy's name even in anyone's rolodex anymore? What the hell?

And why is it everytime Dubya gets up there and talks about the good news coming out of the surge the media just reports it like, you know, he's got any credibility on the subject at all. It's the like global warming "debate;" there are two sides to this arguement, the facts still aren't in, we just want to get the science right etc.

What two sides of the Iraq debate are there? There's the administraion and the Pentagon's view which is soley intended to keep the enterprise afloat and then there's objective reality. The media dosen't get that though or they don't want to.

And the war just goes on and on.

Some day people are going to look back on this and say 'what the hell was wrong with these folks?' Assuming, that is, people are still around and they still have access to film and pictures and books, and if they can read those books. Oh right, there'll always be Dubya's presidential lie-brary and its think-tank attached to set the facts straight for succeeding generations -- if, like I say, there are any.