Watching
George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like having an
out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a different galaxy.
As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration (No, it's not a
terrorist attack -- that was 2001! No, it's not a catastrophic war -- that was
2003! No, it's not a drowning city -- that was 2005! This one is an economic
meltdown, ladies and gentlemen!) bringing to it the same blithe disengagement
with which he's attended the previous ones, you cannot but stop and gaze in
stark comedic awe, realizing that the most powerful polity that ever existed on
the planet twice picked this imbecilic buffoon as its leader, from among 300
million other choices. Seeing him clown with the Washington press corps yet
once again -- and seeing them fawn over him, laugh in all the right places, and
give him a standing ovation, also yet once again -- is the equivalent of having
all your logic circuits blown simultaneously. Truly, the universe has a twisted
and deeply ironic sense of humor. Monty Python is about as funny -- and as stiff
-- as Dick Nixon, by comparison.
It's simply incomprehensible. It's not so astonishing, of course, that a
country could have a bad leader whose aims are nefarious on the occasions when
they are competent enough to rise to that level of intentionality. Plenty of
countries have managed that feat, especially when -- as was the case with Bush
-- every sort of scam is employed to steal power, and then pure corruption and
intimidation used to keep it. History is quite littered indeed with bimbos and
petty criminals of this caliber. What is harder to explain is how the citizens
of a country of such remarkable achievements in other domains, and with the
capacity to choose, allow this to happen. And then stand by silently watching
for eight years as the tragedy unfolds before their eyes.
But let's give credit where credit is due. This is precisely by design. This is
exactly the outcome intended by the greatest propaganda-promulgating regime
since Hermann Göring set fire to the Reichstag. It was Göring himself who famously
reminded us that, 'Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in
Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But
after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is
always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or
a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ...Voice
or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger. It works the same in any country.' Sure worked in Germany. And it
worked even better here, because these guys were so absolutely careful to avoid
exposing the costs of their war to those who could demand its end. For example,
by some counts, there are more mercenaries in Iraq, at extremely high cost,
than there are U.S. military personnel.
There's only one reason for that. If the administration implemented the draft
that is actually necessary to supply this war with adequate personnel, the
public would end both the war and the careers of its sponsors, post haste. For
the same reason, this is the first American war ever which has not only not
been accompanied by a tax increase, but has in fact witnessed a tax cut.
Likewise -- to 'preserve the dignity' of the dead, of course -- you are no
longer permitted to see photographs of flag-draped caskets returning to Dover
Air Force Base. And the press are embedded with forces who are also responsible
for their safety, which is just a fancy way of saying that they're so censored
they make Pravda look good. It is, in short, quite easy for average Americans
to get through their day, every day, without the war impacting their lives in
any visible respect, and that is precisely what hundreds of millions of us are
doing, week in and week out. All of this is courtesy of an administration that
couldn't run a governmental program to save its own life -- but, boy, it sure
as hell knows how to market stuff.
Perhaps Americans and American democracy are no wiser or better than any other
people or political system, even today, even after the worst century of warfare
in human history, even after the mirror-image experience of Vietnam. Maybe the
experience of Iraq hasn't even changed them, and they'll once again follow like
lemmings when led to war by pathetic creatures such as George W. Bush, 50 years
from now. Or five years from now. Or even five months from now, as Dick Cheney
tees up a confrontation with Iran in order keep Democrats out of the White
House and himself out of jail.
Sure, presidents and prime ministers, no less than kings and führers, will lie
their countries into war. Sure, they're very good at it and getting better all
the time. Definitely a frightened people are more prone to stupidity than those
lucky enough to contemplate in the luxury of quiet safety. Without question, it
helps an awful lot -- if you're just Joe Sixpack, out there trying to figure
out international politics in between a long day's work, helping the kids with
their algebra homework, and the Yankee game -- to have a checking-and-balancing
Congress, a responsible opposition party, and/or a critical media helping you
to understand the issues accurately, rather than gleefully capitulating to
executive power at every opportunity. But that by no means excuses a public who
was fundamentally far more lazy than they were ignorant or confused. And lazy
is one thing when you're talking about a highway bill or even national
healthcare. But when it comes to war, lazy is murder.
I don't think it took a giant leap of logic to understand that this war was
bogus from the beginning, even based on what was known at the time. The war was
sold on three basic arguments, each of which could have been easily dismantled
even then with a little thoughtful consideration.
The first was WMD, of course. So, OK, perhaps your average American didn't know
that the United States government (including many in the current
administration) had actually once supplied Saddam Hussein the material to make
these evil weapons and had covered for him at the United Nations and elsewhere
when he used them. This historical myopia is very much part of the problem, of
course. Americans are so ready to denounce supposed enemies without doing the
slightest bit of historical homework to make sense of the situation. If you
don't know that the United States actually canceled elections and helped
assassinate a 'democratic' president in Vietnam, of course you're going to
support war there. If you don't know that the United States toppled a
democratically elected Iranian government to steal the country's oil and then
installed a brutal dictatorship in its place, of course you're going to be angry
at U.S. diplomats being held hostage. And if you don't bother to learn the true
history of Iraq, perhaps you'll find the WMD argument quite persuasive.
But, in fact, even without the historical background information, it never made
a damn bit of sense. Iraq had been pulverized by war and sanctions for over 20
years prior to 2003. Two-thirds of its airspace was controlled by foreign
militaries. Its northern region was effectively autonomous, a separate country
in all but name. It was in no position to attack anyone. Moreover, it hadn't
attacked anyone -- not the United States or anyone else. Indeed, it hadn't even
threatened to attack anyone. Shouldn't that be part of the calculation in
determining whether to go to war? Do we really want to give carte blanche to
any dry (we hope) drunkard in the White House who today wants to bomb Norway
('They're stealing our fish!') or tomorrow wants to invade Burkina Faso ('They
dress funny!')?
Too often, of course, the historical answer to that question has unfortunately
been yes, we apparently do want to do that. But let's consider the massive
warning signs in this case, even apart from what could be known about the
administration's lies at the time. Shouldn't it have been enormously
problematic that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? Even the administration
never had the gall to make that claim. Wasn't it transparent to anyone that
America had plenty on its plate already in dealing with the enemy we were told
we had, rather than adding a new adventure to the pile? And why wasn't this
thing selling throughout the world, or even amongst the traitorous half of the
Democratic Party in Congress? Remember how everyone at home and abroad -- yes,
including the French -- supported the United States and its military actions in
Afghanistan only 12 months before? Shouldn't it have been a warning sign of
epic proportions that these same folks wouldn't countenance a war in Iraq just
a year later? That the administration had to yank its Security Council
resolution off the table, even after breaking both the arms of every
member-state around the horseshoe table, because it could still only get
Britain and two other patsies to lie down for this outrage, out of a total of
15, and nine needed to pass?
And how about the logic of that whole WMD thing, after all? Did anyone ever
stop to think that 36 other countries were thought to have clandestine WMD
programs, including around a dozen that are pretty hostile to the United
States? Did anyone not remember that the Soviets once had nearly 25,000 strategic
nuclear warheads pointed in our direction? What ever happened to the logic of
deterrence? To mutually assured destruction? And what about the mad rush to go
to war, preempting the U.N. weapons inspectors from doing their job? Are we
really OK with the notion that instead of 'risking' whatever would have been at
risk by giving the inspectors another six or eight weeks to finish up, we've
instead bought this devastating war down on our own heads for no reason at all?
The second rationale for war was the bogus linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda.
The extent and ramifications of this lie are so significant that the White
House, it was just recently revealed, squelched a Pentagon report showing no
connections between the two. Remember how definitive Cheney and the rest were
of this supposed al Qaeda linkage, based pretty much entirely on a meeting
between two operatives in Prague which likely didn't even take place? Now we
find out that the Department of Defense has spent the last five years combing
through a mere 600,000 documents, and found zero evidence of such a link. Not
some evidence. Not mixed evidence. Zero evidence.
Then, once again, there's the matter of that whole pesky logic thing. Pay
attention now, class. What do we know about al Qaeda? They are devoted to
religious war -- jihad -- in the name of replacing governments across the
Middle East with theocracies, or better yet recreating the old Islamic
caliphate stretching across the region, right? Right. Now if this vision could
have more thoroughly contradicted Saddam's agenda for a secular dictatorship
seeking regional domination on his own Stalinist terms, it is hard to imagine
how. You don't need a Ph.D. in international politics to see that these two
actors were about as antithetical to each other as the Republican Party is to
integrity.
Lastly, Bush's little adventure in Mesopotamia was supposed to bring democracy
to the region, remember? Never mind, of course, that there has long already
been a fairly thriving Islamic democracy, right next door. Oops! It's called
Turkey. And let's not forget Mr. Bush's long-standing devotion to democracy, as
he amply demonstrated in the American election of 2000. Or as he has
continually manifested by bravely and publicly pushing the Chinese to
democratize. Just as he has with his pals in Egypt and especially the family
friends running Saudi Arabia, the recipient of more American foreign aid than
nearly any other country in all the world.
What is clear is that the reasons given to the American public for the war in
Iraq were entirely bogus. This much is already on the public record, from the Downing
Street memos and beyond. Even if we can only speculate on why they actually
invaded -- oil, glory, personal insecurity, Israel, clobbering Democrats,
Middle Eastern dominance -- what we know for sure is that the rationale fed to
the public was a knowingly fabricated
pack of scummy lies. It wasn't about WMD, it wasn't about links to al
Qaeda, and it sure wasn't about democracy.
But even if we can't identify the true motivations within the administration
for invading, we can surely begin to see the costs. Probably a million Iraqi
civilians are dead. Over 4
million are displaced and now living as refugees. Together, these equal a
staggering one-fifth of the population of the entire country. Meanwhile, the
remaining four-fifths are living in squalor, fear and a psychological damage so
extensive that it is hard to grasp. America has lost 4,000 soldiers, with
perhaps another 30,000 gravely wounded. Hundreds of thousands more will be
scarred for life from their experiences in the hell of Mr. Bush's war. Our
military is broken and incapable of responding to a real emergency, at home or
abroad. Our economy will sustain a blow of perhaps $3 trillion before all is
said and done. Our reputation in the world is in the toilet. We have turned the
Iranian theocracy into a regional hegemon. And we have massively proliferated
our own enemies within the Islamic community. That would be one hell of an
expensive war, even if the reasons given for it were legitimate. It is nearly
incomprehensible considering that they were not.
This week, a man died in France, the last surviving veteran of World War I, a
devastating conflict that -- even a century later -- nobody can really explain
to this day. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, John McCain and Joe
'Make-me-SecDef-Mac-oh-please-pick-me-Mac' Lieberman parachuted into Iraq for
photo-ops to sustain the war they don't have the integrity or the guts to
abandon. Never mind that their visits had to be by surprise, and that they
stroll around the Green Zone wearing armored vests -- surely the most powerful
measures of the war's success imaginable. Of course, to be fair, we've only
been at it for five years now. Perhaps after the remaining 95 on McCain's
agenda go by, Americans will finally be safe enough in Iraq to announce their
visits in advance.
So, happy anniversary, America! You put these people in charge, and then --
after seeing in explicit in detail what they were capable of -- you actually
did it again in 2004! You stood by in silence watching the devastation wrought
upon an innocent people, produced in your name and financed by your tax
dollars. And you continue to do just that again, now in Year Six.
Brilliant! Put on your party hat, America. You won the prize.
You've successfully answered the musical question, 'How lethally stupid can one
country be?'
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra
University. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net) but
regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his
work can be found at www.regressiveantidote.net/.