SkaroffBlog

Every day I find it increasingly difficult to write about the war. I was never a supporter of the war, always recognizing the lies that this entire venture was built on, and while I certainly don’t qualify as a member of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists I often am concerned that I need to do more than write here and spout invective against this immoral war. Current events, combined with my own state of mind, and media like Six Feet Under and Over There on F/X bring more and more to the forefront how angry and impotent and sad I feel. Just last week while waiting for the subway I picked up the Metro and after reading an article on the further unneccessary loss of American and Iraqi life nearly was physically sick.

The worst part is that all these young men, women, and children are dying for no reason. In Vietnam at least there was the sincerely held belief (by some) that we were fighting the scourge of Communism to prevent the dominoes from falling. Say what you will about Robert McNamara and LBJ but I think they truly believed in the cause. In this war we’ve been given line after line and they’ve all been proven to be untrue. Obviously there were no WMDs nor was there a link between Saddam and Al Qaida. Yes Saddam was a tyrant who oppressed his people, but so are Kim Jong Il of North Korea and Islam Karimov of Uzebekistan. And then there’s the “flypaper” theory that even now Bush still maintains but can be proven false through simply examining the logic of the strategy and then turning to actual attacks throughout the world.

Finally there is the administration’s last trump card of spreading democracy. The idea that democracy can be transplanted to the Arabian desert and made to bloom at the point of a gun. (Is not regime change an inherently undemocratic process since it presupposes that the people of the nation can’t make the decision for themselves?) That is why I am so disturbed to see the news coming out of Iraq now. To boil it down, it seems increasingly likely that the Shiites and the Kurds, under pressure from American negotiators, are pushing through a constitution over the wishes of the Sunnis. It introduces federalism and makes Islamic law “the” source of jurisprudence in the country, thereby turning women into second class citizens. Because the BushCo cabal needs good press in the US they are willing to create an Islamic Republic theocracy that oppresses women and sets the table for a potential civil war between these deeply divided ethnic groups. It has become clear that our president cares not for the Iraqi people, our troops on the ground, or for that matter, the future of the entire Middle East and the world, but only for the temporary fortunes of the right wing and his Republican majority.

This link doesn’t even seem appropriate to this post anymore, but Juan Cole believes that with a change of strategy, there could still be hope. Sadly this is not an American presidency that has the bravery to admit ts is wrong, even though our very future may hang in the balance.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 at 1:16 pm and is tagged as War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.