The events of 9/11 had a traumatic effect on the American people. It was the type of shock that could drive a society blind with rage or in our case, send us on a non-stop drinking binge. We were hurt, angry and determined to get revenge. We were vulnerable and in that moment we could be easily led to do many a rash thing. There is so much damage that can be done when a person is under the influence. Consider what we have inflicted on others as a nation drunk on power. During our wild swinging haze a group of men pointed through the fog and claimed to see our enemies. At the time we were ready to believe anything. We were ready to fight anyone and so we followed.
For five years our military has slaved away in Iraq. We have lost more soldiers on the ground there than in the rubble of 9/11. If only we could have seen past our rage. If we were sober that would have been one hell of a sales pitch. George W. Bush addressing the nation with unscrupulous honesty would have said, “My fellow Americans, Iraq is not a credible threat but we are going to invade for selfish reasons that I will never disclose to you. In Iraq we will spend unheard amounts of American money, so much that it will damage our own economy. In Iraq we will annihilate half a million people, many by accident, some of them innocent. In Iraq we will sacrifice the lives of four thousand U.S. soldiers and we will not compensate their families. I promise to bring pain, fear and insecurity to Iraq, to our country and to the world. The wounds of 9/11 shall not be healed. They will instead be exploited. Our national suffering has only begun.” Had the President said the very things that turned out to be true, we would not have followed him. We would have impeached him.
So here we stand at another such crossroads, being sold a shiny new keg of lies. If we are to face the current situation in Iraq without a buzz we’ll need to know which of the current narratives will produce the best outcome. Our Washington representatives have clung to two of the more popular speculations as pertains to our effectiveness and direction. One is that American power, culture and democratization will take root in a foreign land seeding their sand with the genes of capitalist ambitions. The other is that Iraq is a land under siege by an unwanted military presence which secures enough of the infrastructure to ensure that blood, oil and money will fatten the pockets of a handful of Texas millionaires.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
I see a lot of complaining here and the repetition of the usual canards about the supposed 'war for oil' and 'bush lied, people died' and other equally meaningless BS. What I don't see is any 'sober' proposal of how we get out of Iraq in a responsible way. All I see is another leftist drunk on self-righteousness and willing to build a monument to peace with the skulls of future generations of Iraqi children.
Dave
2 - Krutic A
I'm in total agreement with the #1.
Its all propaganda - nothing objective nor sober. Glad I didn't waste my time by reading anything beyond the second paragraph.
3 - Clavos
"...we can dance our way out of this conflict having convinced ourselves that Iraq will be the New York of the Middle East."
What a horrible thing to wish on the Iraqis. Even in the turmoil of war, Baghdad is a far better city than Noo Yawk.
4 - Louis Orlando
Obviously Mr. Hutchinson hasn't a clue! Best he sticks to writing novels where he can control the outcome to fit his agendas.
5 - Thomas
Mr. Hutchinson--I agree with you completely. While these critics that speak against your own criticism state their opinions, they only propose that it's BS because they really don't want to see the truth. While you're actually providing reasoning to your perspective, they just say it's wrong without providing any themselves. It's pretty obvious that you have the higher ground as far as rational thought is going here.
I am, by the way, fighting in the war in Iraq right now, via the U.S. Army. I go outside the wire every other day, to supply food and fuel to other bases, always under constant attack by roadside bombs or small arms fire--all the while knowing that we don't really have a legit reason for being there, based on our original declarations for the invasion. Truly, blood for oil. Our military has good intentions--they want to win hearts and minds. But we're only rationalizing our politicians' choices. I really cannot wait for it to end. War should always be seen as a last resort.
6 - Clavos
"I am, by the way, fighting in the war in Iraq right now, via the U.S. Army."
Bullshit...
7 - STM
I get over there all the time too by osmosis.
G'day Clav ...
8 - Clavos
Hey, Stan.
Can't believe I'm up this early (it's 0548 Saturday here), but I have to drive 90 miles to Palm Beach for day three of the boat show.
9 - Cannonshop
Ohh-kay. um, lots of appeals to emotion, not a lot of sober. There ARE sober reasons to finish the business in Iraq, unfortunately finishing it in a 'sober' way generally doesn't leave ONE iraq, and would probably (likely) piss off our allies the Turks to no end. About the only people IN iraq that like us are the Kurds, and while it might settle some of the longer-standing problems in that region to divorce that northern bit and create a "Kurdistan", it also wouldn't last long without U.S. aid, since everyone around it would go in for making Kurdburger Flambe' with Napalm and the light almondy smell of cyanide. Being that we're the U.S.A. and stubborn, nasty folks that we are, we'd probably give it-thus alienating a member of NATO permanently and sticking our asses in a war WITHOUT oil.
Pulling out entirely is basically telling all the violent pus-buggaring psychotics in the middle east that they can take a weakened, disorderly, disorganized, oil-rich and weapons-soaked nation by storm. If Al Quaeda aren't there now, they WILL BE, along with Hezbollah, and any one of any number of other extreeem wahhabist or Khomenist factions. The best outcome from that, is that the Iranians stage iraq invasion: the Sequel.
What everyone on the Left forgets, is we've seen this shit before with another philosophy, not too terribly long ago. The U.S. left Vietnam, and North Vietnam turned into a neighbour conquering machine, the dominoes DID fall, and American credibility as an ally went into the toilet world-wide. (FLUSH)
five years in, a little under five thousand U.S. dead. Considering the fatality rates to drunk-driving off-post before 9/11, that's not bad.
Radical Islam is NOT going away, and unlike godless communism, it can't be defeated by economics-we're BUYING our own trouble in Petrodollars, the Euros are in (at least on their government's end) full surrender-mode to Wahhabist radicalism and giving every sign of trying to appease their soon-to-be masters. Hell, even the Israelis are trying to Appease their way out of being the first one killed or enslaved. This is not something you can bargain or deal your way out of, Radical Islam isn't going to stop just because you want to be nice. Once they've won in Iraq, it's a game of "Who's next?" Maybe the former Soviet Republics? Maybe Turkey, or Egypt? maybe Israel?? hmm? Indonesia, perhaps, with its islands and oil-wealth? How about a nice game of "Let's make all of africa look like Darfur"? Given the direction the EU has taken wrt the Mohammed cartoons (their court on human rights took the side of censorship, btw. Can't be offending someone who might bomb your next party, after all...)
Yah. Shots have been fired, shots have been exchanged, at this point, backing off or backing down is going to be viewed ONE WAY by the guys planting those IED's and firing those mortars- they have beaten the United States. Success brings ADDED effort. In 1978 President Carter let American Diplomats be held hostage by Iranian militants. The result? throughout the 1980s Islamic Militants upped the ante, taking more hostages, killing more westerners, bombing more Embassies, eventually diversifying into an American Destroyer (USS COLE) and the first WTC bombing attempt (followed, naturally enough, by the second, successful, attack.)
Blowing up an aspirin factory with a cruise-missile that cost more than the facility did, did NOTHING. and will do...NOTHING.
(except make pretty pictures on the news and help some elected sleaze pretend they're trying to do something about the problem).
There are people you can reason with, there ARE people you can make deals with (who will, at least in public, honour those deals). This enemy is not that kind of people. These guys want one thing-the West to be destroyed to make way for a new, global, Islamic Super-state. It's the cold-war all over agian, but this time, out-developing and out-spending ain't gonna win, because these guys can be just as ruthlessly capitalist as our side, and have fewer moral qualms about getting their hands dirty.
10 - STM
Clav: "Can't believe I'm up this early (it's 0548 Saturday here)".
Best time of the day mate ... birds twittering, revelling gibberers asleep, roads quiet.
Bliss
11 - STM
Cannon wrote: "About the only people IN iraq that like us are the Kurds".
That's not strictly true mate. I used to live there. Iraqis don't dislike the US at all, most of them.
Abu Ghraib didn't help, but they are not upset the coalition got rid of a stalinist parody who's favourite party trick was having people fed slowly, feet-first into industrial paper shredders.
They are just war-weary.
The US does need to change the conduct of the war though.
12 - troll
privatize it - as civilian contractors stand up the US military can stand down.......and while at it allow the companies wanting to operate in Iraq to foot the bill - I'd rather pay them at the pump rather than through fed taxes
$20 a gallon gas sounds good to me
13 - John
Hard Fact: Blackwater murdered babies in Iraq while working for the government of the USA and the government liked it and allowed it.
14 - STM
Troll says: "$20 a gallon gas sounds good to me".
I'd expect that from a bloke whose main mode of transport is the horse :)
Wait 'til the price of hay goes up Troll.
That'll wipe the smug grin off yer face.
15 - troll
support federal research/development in tele-transportation....save the world
16 - Baritone
The stupidity of Bush and his administration has thrust us into the cluster fuck of Iraq. They ran us in willy-nilly only to discover that we are now painted into a corner.
I know this is an old and now, I guess, pointless perspective given the current situation, but we could have fought islamic radicals much more effectively had we never entered Iraq. Iraq was a secular state loathed nearly as much by Al Qaida and other islamic radicals as they hated the west. Saddam was a turd of the first order, but can anyone think that things could be any worse for Iraqis under Saddam than they are today? In the end it matters little who is killing you. Can anyone imagine that during this same period since our initial invasion of Iraq that there would now be more Iraqi dead under Saddam?
It's certainly magnanimous of Cannon to find the US dead in the Iraq effort to be "not bad." The parents, spouses, children, other relatives and friends of those killed will take a great deal of comfort from that sentiment.
Had we never entered the fray in Vietnam, perhaps some "dominos" may have fallen, but so what? Fifty seven thousand Americans and countless Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians and others parhaps would not have wound up face down in rice paddies.
I actually think that islamic radicals are a far greater danger to the world than communism ever was. But our incursion into Iraq has done nothing to quell that threat, rather it is now far more wide spread than ever.
It is obvious that we can't just walk away from Iraq at this juncture. We have, by our own idiotic efforts, totally disrupted the region rendering it a powder keg with Sunnis, Shias, Kurds and Al Qaida operatives all vying for power.
How we can hope to bring all this carnage under some semblance of control appears to be a mystery to all. The "surge" may have reduced incidents of violence, but it does not likely follow that stability is on the horizon. McCain could be right. We might well be there for a hundred years. Bush has handed us a load of shit, and now we have to figure out how to cleanse ourselves. Even if our hands eventually look clean at some point, there will likely be doody remnants left under our nails and the stench will linger for a long, long time. Good job George!
B-tone
17 - Dave Nalle
John, when did "Hard Fact" start to mean "bullshit I made up"?
Dave
18 - Dr Dreadful
Cannonshop, you're being cynically hyperbolic with your 'domino theory' scenario. A grand total of two neighboring countries ended up with communist governments after the Vietnam War. Had the dominoes fallen to such a cataclysmic scale as you're suggesting, the Indian Ocean basin from India to the Philippines would have gone communist. As we all know, not even Thailand did.
19 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
I think the bottom line is being ignored here, gentlemen. The bottom line is not that America should or shouldn't leave Iraq for whatever reason. The bottom line is that you can no longer afford to stay there.
The war that really gave brth to the United States was the Seven Years War in the middle of the 18th Century. It was really a world war, with Britain engaged against France in India, North America and Europe. Britain won - on paper.
In reality, the British treasury was emptied by this war, and the British government tried to figure out a way to re-fill it. They happened upon soaking their North American colonies. This strategy was what ultimately caused a bunch of those colonies to separate from the British Empire and re-involve France once again in war against Britain. This time, the French treasury was emptied out, and this ultimately led to the French Revolution and the shortening of King Louie by a head....
The British still had another ace to play at the ass-end of the world, but France was wracked by war and instability for decades.
You are seeing the same thing happening now to you as happened to Britain in 1765, and France in 1785. Your treasury has been emptied into the Tigris and the Euphrates. Your economy is now going to have to bear the brunt of policies that are bankrupting you. Worse, none of the non-entities who wish to lead you have either the brains or balls to tell you this or recommend a solution. And that is the bottom line here. I fear to contemplate what you face in the near future.
20 - Baritone
While I reserve judgment as regards our "non-entities" vying for the presidency, I must admit that I agree with Ruvy on this one.
The current tally on the cost of our Iraqi involvement has eclipsed five hundred billion dollars. I would wager that it is actually far more than that. I find it odd that rarely do I hear economists point to our expenditures in Iraq and the consequent negative ripples our involvement there sends out across other world economies as a source of our current financial woes. That we are heavily in debt to China and many other countries doesn't seem to register either.
Certainly, the current situation in domestic real estate markets is having a strong dilatory effect on our economy, it is not the only, nor, perhaps not the chief source of our problems.
I also find it rather disingenuine that so many people oppose national health care owing to its probable high costs to taxpayers, yet just shrug at the money going down the shitter in Iraq and Afghanistan. If those who don't believe that the government can efficiently manage our health care, how can they believe that it can manage a war any better? How many billions of dollars have gone missing in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 5 or 6 years? How much has been otherwise mis-spent? How will the cost of all the borrowed money affect our economy in the years to come? How much further down is the U.S. dollar likely to sink against other currencies in the future?
I'm sure there are other, perhaps more meaningful questions to be asked. But it can be assumed that no matter how other aspects of our economy may rebound, we will continue to find it difficult to keep our heads above water as long as the anchor of our Iraq expenditures remains chained to our proverbial ankles.
B-tone
21 - STM
Ruvy: "The British still had another ace to play at the ass-end of the world, but France was wracked by war and instability for decades".
Lol. Arse-end Ruve, not ass end ...
As to the French - well, 1000 years of military humiliation delivered by the hands of those lesser-beings of that upstart island nation (the one shaped liked a witch taking a dump) just across the channel will do that to a people.
The French still haven't forgotten. Their great legacy is Britain is the number of victory statues and meorials dotted about the place. That and French fries (chips, the great British fried potato). And most of it they brought upon themselves (although only the British can carry the can for the state of their own cuisine).
Bonaparte's rampage across Europe was every bit as bloody as Hitler's.
America isn't in the same situation yet, not by a long shot.
America's fiscal decline is more about the belief in the relatively new notion that a nation's wealth is best earned by shuffling bits of paper around on Wall St rather than in actually making stuff and selling it - which paradoxically is what America's best at.
22 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Bonaparte's rampage across Europe was every bit as bloody as Hitler's. America isn't in the same situation yet, not by a long shot.
With respect to France, you fast forward too quickly, Stan. You need to savor the full odor of the bitter wine of decline before you get to the bloody aroma of heads rolling in Paris squares under the kind ministrations of Dr. Guillotine.
The stench starts when the French king does an actual audit, a real one, and a Frenchman with green eyeshades and a sharp pencil (or quill) goes to King Louie to say, "Sire, you're busted."
The good king says, "What do you mean, 'you', kimosabe?" You're my subject too, so you're also busted, buster!"
The fellow with the green eyehades replies, "but with all due respect, my King. A famous ancestor of yours said, 'je suis l'état'. I think it's time for you to go borrow a charity box from les juives and shake it in the street saying, 'can you spare a denier, buddy - or maybe a louis d'or?'"
At this point, the king busts a gasket and shouts, "Guards, seize him! "Off to the Bastille with you, you merde!"
It's going to take some time for the élites to admit that the U.S. is up shit's creek without a paddle. They will need tine to protect their own assets before actually admitting how bad the situation really is. All that brave talk about producing and selling would have been fine if American bankers and oil men weren't so mercenary and damned greedy, forcing American businessmen to find ever cheaper sources of labor.
It's not that what you say is wrong - in theory, it is spot on. But the sad reality is that you can't rebuild a manufacturing infrastructure on the rotting remains of the rusting manufacturing base abandoned decades ago. That takes real money and commitment - and while there are those with the commitment, the bankers are now sitting on the money.
Arse-end Ruve, not ass end ... When I spell "savor", "odor" and "labor" with a "u" in the middle, I'll adopt such Britshisms as "arse" in place of "ass". In the meantime, I spell according to the rules of American English laid out by Noah Webster.
23 - bliffle
I just viewed "Uncovered: The true story of the Iraq war". It pretty well refutes all the reasons we've been given for invading Iraq, presented by the experts who were vainly looking for reasons.
Let's face it: this whole trillion dollar folly is just a Vanity War to bolster the ego of an incompetent kid who never did anything right in his life.
24 - Baritone
The U.S. doesn't "make" much any longer. As Ruvy suggests, (this agreeing with you has just got to stop!) we are now a nation of paper shufflers, of electronic money moving, a nation of investors. Our industrial infastructure has been in the wane for at least the last 30 to 40 years.
What is really frightening is that all our "digital" wealth could disappear at the errant or intended stroke of a computer key.
Most newer manufacturing in the U.S. is in some area of electronics, communications, etc. That, I suppose, is a good thing. But you'll play hell finding a maker of widgets anywhere within our borders. All our widgets are now being made in China and/or third world countries.
We are faced with a serious conundrum. Many relatively high paying union jobs in manufacturing have disappeared over the last several years. Folks who had been earning, say $15 to $25 per hour are now faced with taking service oriented jobs which may pay no more than $8 to $10 per hour. Many pay less. Many such people are forced to work multiple jobs to have any hope of maintaining their homes purchased in better times, (I'm not referring to sub-prime mortgagors.) and their life styles.
Even many of the poorest Americans are unwilling to perform what are viewed as menial labor - agricultural work, low end janitorial and maintenance work, roofing & other construction work, fast food, etc. Enter Mexican immigrants.
Those who would expel these people and prevent their entry into the country in the future have no answer to the question who is going to pick our fruits and vegetables? Who is going to perform other menial labor which is now largely done by Hispanics?
This may be going off on a tangent, but I believe that it's all of a piece. The American economy is fragile at best. Our bubble can burst from any number of sources - from terrorism to keystrokes.
B-tone
25 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Baritone,
The reason that you and I are agreeing is simply that I'm describing the same reality you see all around you in our native land. We have both seen the rise of Japanese transistor radios (and heard Allan Sherman's song making fun of them); the rise of the multiple letter corporations in suburban industrial parks (and heard Allan Sherman's song making fun of them); the subsequent flood of imports from overseas; the rise of fuel prices in the seventies; the rusting out of the steel-belt in the mid-west and closing of the steel and manufacturing companies (and heard the song Allentown) bemoaning the betrayal of an entire generation of people). We have both seen the rise of homelessness (I've done more than just "see", I "participated" for a time); the rise of the "service" economy and the malling of the America.
We have both lived and seen the same things and drawn similar conclusions. I haven't spent much time on what I believe to be the root causes, but without referring to religion or G-d, or Divine intervention, and sticking only to human actions, you see many of these things caused by the machinations of those described in A Century of War, by Engdahl, a book I once recommended to Clavos.
Before prattling on about Divine intervention and the like, it is extremely important for me to get the facts on the ground straight, so that I can intelligently look to my books of Wisdom, the Tana"kh and Zohar for guidance as to underlying reasons. As I've written elsewhere, the proof of a prophecy is whether it comes to pass.
In that spirit, I'll leave you with only one prophecy, one that I believes gives a hint of the very near future.
ko amár ADOSHÉM ELOH-ÍM hinéni elékha gog nasí rosh méshekh v'tubál:
Thus said my L-rd G-d, here I am against you Gog, prince (or president), leader of Meshekh and Tubál: [Zechariah 39:1 (in part)]
This is the beginning of the famous prophecy where G-d, speaking through Zechariah, tells Gog, a foreign invader (or visitor?) of this country, that he will die on the mountains of Israel, food for birds of prey.
I ask you only to look at the underlined word in bold in Hebrew, and the corresponding translation in English.
The Hebrew noun for "prince" or "president" is masculine. G-d, speaking through Zechariah, is addressing a man. This is my prediction, based on that prophecy: Hillary Clinton will not be elected to lead your country.
I'll stand by that.