Iraq and the US role: A continuing tragedy

This is the nightmare we knew we were in for when the first ‘shock and awe’ bombs fell, and no one knows how or when it’s going to end, except that it won’t be any time soon.

Do you remember those “Saturday Night Live” sketches during the weeks after the 2000 election when the result was still in doubt? One of them showed GW in the White House, looking shell shocked, hiding under his desk as part of his office was on fire, because he’d screwed up so badly.

It may be a little like that in the White House now (or it would be, if he were there.) The American Research Group survey shows his approval rating is at 36%, a point lower than Nixon’s after the Watergate hearings and impeachment hearings, and just before he resigned. Iraq is a major contributing cause to those numbers, though the economy isn't far behind.

Bush left his increasingly besieged ranch to address the organization most likely to support him on Iraq, the VFW, in the reddest of the red states, Utah. Though there were dissenters, the VFW gave him the predictable warm welcome, but there were 2,000 protestors nearby, led by the Mayor of Salt Lake City. (Story with photos here.)

Bush and the Bushites have fallen back on the most craven McCarthyism (a White House spokesperson suggesting that war opponents don’t want the US to win the war on terror; Rumsfeld making grand analogies to people who didn’t support World War II) while turning his blind eye of denial on the draft Iraqi constitution, which has others wondering if all this blood and treasure was devoted to creating an impoverished Islamic state on the brink of civil war.

Bush’s central arguments haven’t changed since the campaign, except that some of the reasons he says he started the war has obviously changed. They were reiterated yesterday, as they were last month, when a young Iraqi woman in Iraq who calls herself riverrun, commented on them in her blog, “Baghdad Burning.” She responded to the connection Bush is making with even greater frequency now, that the war in Iraq is the war on terror:

"Do people really still believe this? In spite of that fact that no WMD were found in Iraq, in spite of the fact that prior to the war, no American was ever killed in Iraq and now almost 2000 are dead on Iraqi soil? It’s difficult to comprehend that rational people, after all of this, still actually accept the claims of a link between 9/11 and Iraq. Or that they could actually believe Iraq is less of a threat today than it was in 2003.

We did not have Al-Qaeda in Iraq prior to the war. We didn’t know that sort of extremism. We didn’t have beheadings or the abduction of foreigners or religious intolerance. We actually pitied America and Americans when the Twin Towers went down and when news began leaking out about it being Muslim fundamentalists- possibly Arabs- we were outraged.Now 9/11 is getting old. Now, 100,000+ Iraqi lives and 1700+ American lives later, it’s becoming difficult to summon up the same sort of sympathy as before. How does the death of 3,000 Americans and the fall of two towers somehow justify the horrors in Iraq when not one of the people involved with the attack was Iraqi?"

She quotes Bush's speech--“We continued our efforts to help them rebuild their country. Rebuilding a country after three decades of tyranny is hard and rebuilding while a country is at war is even harder."--and responds:

Three decades of tyranny isn’t what bombed and burned buildings to the ground. It isn’t three decades of tyranny that destroyed the infrastructure with such things as “Shock and Awe” and various other tactics. Though he fails to mention it, prior to the war, we didn’t have sewage overflowing in the streets like we do now, and water cut off for days and days at a time. We certainly had more than the 8 hours of electricity daily. In several areas they aren’t even getting that much."

To Bush's statement--“They are doing that by building the institutions of a free society, a society based on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and equal justice under law.”--she indicates that the Iraqi forces being trained are already becoming known as ruthless tools of the US.

"We’re so free, we often find ourselves prisoners of our homes, with roads cut off indefinitely and complete areas made inaccessible. We are so free to assemble that people now fear having gatherings because a large number of friends or family members may attract too much attention and provoke a raid by American or Iraqi forces.

As to Iraqi forces…There was too much to quote on the new Iraqi forces. He failed to mention that many of their members were formerly part of militias, and that many of them contributed to the looting and burning that swept over Iraq after the war and continued for weeks."

“The new Iraqi security forces are proving their courage every day.” (She quotes Bush, and replies: "Indeed they are. The forte of the new Iraqi National Guard? Raids and mass detentions. They have been learning well from the coalition. They sweep into areas, kick down doors, steal money, valuables, harass the females in the household and detain the men. The Iraqi security forces are so effective that a few weeks ago, they managed to kill a high-ranking police major in Falluja when he ran a red light, shooting him in the head as his car drove away."

These are hard truths, that most Americans aren't getting---although it seems they know this. Another survey shows that 60% of Americans don’t feel they get enough information on military matters to make decisions as voters, and their confidence in the media to provide this information is slipping. They apparently don’t expect it from the military itself---three fourths expect the military to lie.

Add to this the continuing carnage in Iraq, the stories that suggest the US is digging in (or more accurately, creating a citadel city within Baghdad) to stay for a long while, and the increasingly ugly Bushwhacker attacks on anyone--including fellow Republicans--who criticize this Iraqmire.

But perhaps the greatest tragedy (which many, including GW's own father, foretold) is that there is now no good solution. Getting out of Iraq is essential, but no one seems to know how to do it in a way that prevents or even mitigates likely disaster in the region for a long time.

Asked about Bush's call for teaching "intelligent design" in school science, John Kerry replied that Bush would be better off with some intelligent design for Iraq. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any.