I am saddened and enraged by the prospect of a troop surge in Iraq.
America has lost over 3000 men and women in that place, more than the total number who died as a result of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks. That’s not even touching on the KIA of other countries or the truly horrific six-figure toll of Iraqis. It’s certainly not including the other casualties. Those who, at age 20, have lost the use of their limbs for the rest of their lives. Those who come back permanently psychologically damaged from the horrible sights. Those who are physically disfigured. And their loved ones, who cannot help but ask “WHY?”
All this pain and death, for what?
I used to think it was about oil. Maybe, in the sick global hegemony fantasies of the Project for a New American Century, it was about oil — American control of the natural resources of the world. But the members of PNAC were delusional. These were the people who expected (or wrote in their “Manifesto” that they expected) to be welcomed with open arms and flowers strewn in the streets of Baghdad.
The PNAC group, I believe, had seized control of the Republican Party by 1999. They anointed George W. Bush not necessarily because he had long-standing sympathies to the PNAC “cause,” but because he was the best tool to manipulate. He would have a personal reason to support a war in Iraq — revenge on the man who tried to assassinate his daddy. When John McCain’s 2000 candidacy posed a threat to Bush, the PNAC’ers attacked him brutally and ruthlessly. The same treatment went to Al Gore and later John Kerry, with the results bloodily apparent.
The war originally was, for Bush, about payback. But later it became about his own political future. That’s what it is now. That is what people are suffering and dying for — Bush’s “legacy.”
The neocons are absolutely convinced that Vietnam could have been “won” if they’d thrown more bodies at it. They are the leftovers from the Vietnam/Watergate era, and they think they are learning from the “mistakes” of that era. Nixon was called out for his “imperial” executive mentality; Bush has gone farther in that direction and (thus far) mostly gotten away with it. We left Vietnam and Saigon fell; the neocons seem to think that Iraq can be bought with more blood.
The neocons are finished as a force in politics. Except for a persistent 30% of the population, their ideas have lost their last minuscule shred of credibility with the American public. They are in the Denial stage of grief, hoping that a “victory” can be salvaged in order to save face. Bush is fully complicit in their agenda, although for him, it is personal. He doesn’t want to go down as a failure. I don’t think he cares one bit about the welfare of anyone else, including those who put him in power. Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and Ken Blackwell are probably (with the exception of the 2000 Supreme Court) the three people who are singly most responsible for his ascent to office, and their political careers are now over.
The PNAC people and Bush are making a gamble that if they throw more troops into Iraq, things will turn around, and they can claim vindication. The problem with this, of course, is that Bush and the neocons are gambling with human lives. Unlike gambling in a casino, you never get back blood and bodies that you’ve bet. Like vampires, they are feeding on the blood of innocents in the hope of keeping themselves alive.
The 110th Congress is sworn in today, and already some in positions of power have decided to play nice. They speak of “bipartisanship” and “temporary” troop surges.
With Bush and the neocons, there is no such thing, first of all. You’d think that they’d learn that, after being lied to time and time again.
Secondly, once those lives are spent, there’s no getting them back. This isn’t a video game where you command an army of CGI soldiers. They are real people.
Finally, if they are only capable of thinking in terms of cold political strategy, a troop surge is a bad strategy. This has been Bush’s war. If the new Congress goes along with his wishes, it will share in his inevitable dishonor, by rejecting the opportunity to use the power it was granted by the American people last November.
This has gone way past “How do you ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake.”
The question now is “How do you ask a man to be the last one to die for a political game?”
Or, perhaps, “How do you ask any man to die for a political game?”
