Happy Anniversary, George
In March, 2003 the United States commenced Shock and Awe and bombed the hell out of Baghdad to soften Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for an invasion. By April, the Baathist regime tumbled and the Codpiece in Chief declared the end of major hostilities on the deck of a ship outside of Los Angeles. Our warrior-god-president flew a jet out to sea to show us he is at least as tough as the president that William Pullman played in Independence Day. He is a man’s man, is our George. US kicks ass again, wiping away the anguish of the loss of Vietnam.
Mission Accomplished. End of Major Hostilities. We were on top of the world, even though most of the rest of the world was disgusted by the way that our leadership beat the drums to war while at the same time pleading that they were trying to find a way out of this. “But that damned Hussein is just so damned intractable, and he’s out their in Nigeria buying yellowcake. He’s out there importing aluminum tubes, the kind that can only be used to refine weapons-grade atomic weapons. He’s out there making new bio-weapons and violating the ban on sarin gas. We’re peaceful, but they hate our freedoms.”
After the End of Major Hostilities 4,000 American war dead are the legacy of Minor Hostilities. We don’t have a reliable count of the Iraqi war dead so the numbers vary wildly from the hundreds of thousands to a million. Warlords play games with the Iraqi government, Turkey swoops in to prevent a Kurdish uprising. Allies and enemies shift allegiances and play civilians against each other. Once thriving neighborhoods in the cities of Iraq are now rubble. Jobs for rebuilding go to imported labor while Iraqis are rejected by profiteering subcontractors. Billions of dollars for rebuilding just disappear, and the Senate holds no hearings on accountability (except to try to find a menacing corruption in the Oil for Food program of years back.)
Our political candidates for president are not hearing the people of the United States who want to end this folly NOW. We must leave responsibly or there will be a bloodbath. There is a bloodbath going on now. Christopher Hitchens says that if we leave now there will be a new wholesale slaughter that will make the genocides of Rwanda look like a mild matter. John McCain says we will only leave when we have peace, even if it takes 100 years. Hillary Clinton looks to a “responsible” pull out, as does Obama. I don’t even know what that means, or what “victory” looks like.
Vjack at Atheist Revoluton says that on the homefront we aren’t sacrificing for the war as did our parents and grandparents during the Second World War. He is right in that we are not being asked to sacrifice now, but I say we are shifting the sacrifice forward. The war is being paid for by future taxes and not current taxes. Bush wants to be remembered for cutting taxes, remember? The sacrifice will come as interest burdens the national budget so heavily that there will be less and less funding available for the things that we really need to pay for here at home; education, health care, poverty relief, roads, bridges……
It is part of the NeoCons’ plan to drown the US Government in debt to force the libertarian ideal.
This is a post written as my conribution to a special project on this fifth anniversary of Shock and Awe. March 19th Iraq Blogswarm. Today, bloggers all over will be posting their reactions to the continuation of this war. There will be calls for peace protests, impeachment of the warmongers and constructive ideas on what can be done to pressure the US government to end this NOW. It is irresponsible. It is deadly. It is wrong. Some suggestions from VJack:
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- Contact your elected officials and make sure they know that ending the war in Iraq is important to you. Let them know that you vote and are not willing to keep voting for them if they continue to neglect their duty to the people.
- Write a letter to the editor of your local paper expressing your position on Iraq.
- Call for the impeachment of President Bush.
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