Saturday, December 17, 2011

"I MISUNDERESTIMATED": George Bush on the Iraq War

The Iraq War formally ended yesterday (December 15, 2011) with a whimper. There was no fanfare. Our leaders have no "stomach" to face up to the necessary reevaluations or objective analysis of the war as an abject, monumental mistake--or the effects of a "misunderestimate" by George Bush. The announcement of the war's end by President Obama, stirred not the holiday shoppers away from their seasonal pursuit of bargains, or disuaded the pundits, bloggers and talking heads from continuing to focus their attention on the lack-luster hopefuls in the Republican race for the presidential nomination. Rather than the Iraq war the attention of the pundits these last few days has been devoted to the erratic and unstable Newt Gringrich (in some places now being referredd to as "Newtzilla Gingrich") , who in spite of his inflammatory rhetoric (like encouraging preemptive war with Iran, and denigrating Palestinans as a people) is ahead in the Republican state polls. This fact rightly worries the GOP establishment.

The scarcity of Iraq war coverage is understandable. No one wants to talk much about past failures. But here again our national press corps and media fail basic Journalism 101. These very same journalists and print-encrusted institutions who mostly fell into obedient line with the warmongers and neocons during the run-up to the war, stumbled embarrassingly into into jingoism and yellow journalism during the war, and now that it is over, they fail their journalistic duties again by largely ignoring the unpalatable history of this war, eschewing a critique of its failures on many fronts.

Last night, observing the final Republican “debate” before the upcoming Iowa caucuses, I heard not one word about the Iraq War, our sacrifices there, or its formal ending on that very day. Instead, unbelievably, there was considerable saber rattling by the candidates for a new war with Iran—over that nation's purported nuclear ambitions. It is difficult to fathom what short memories our citizenry have and how blatantly some of our political leaders pander to fears and biases of minorities in their audiences. (Regarding this matter--Dr. Ron Paul stood out as the only rational and honest voice on the stage.)

Thus ends George Bush’s war, its rationale based on lies and innuendo, which cost taxpayers a trillion dollars up front (and an estimated two-trillion more over the decades to come). Over its nine-year course, Bush and his minions sacrificed the lives of 4500 young Americans, were responsible for the maiming of another thirty thousand, and caused the deaths of well more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians (by actual body count, but standard statistical studies have concluded that the war related loss of life was closer to half a million) and made refugees of some two to four million. And for what purpose? Iraq was not involved in the 9-11 attacks and had no weapons of mass destruction. But the war was not only an unmitigated first-order disaster to Iraq, fulfilling America's initial war aims to bomb that nation “back into the stone age”. (Today, as a result of those military efforts and failures and corruption in reconstruction, Baghdad, continues in squalor nine years after the invasion, with a limping, fractured infrastructure and with insufficient potable water and only a few hours each day of electrical service.)

But if the war was a terrible descent into an abbatoir and charnel house-hell for Iraqis, its outcome has been little better for the USA. This awful nine-year conflict bookends one of the ugliest and dark periods of American history. The war era exposed us as a nation which could forget its best motives and history to become barbaric invaders and occupiers, flouters of international law, torturers, “trigger-happy cowboys” and for some of our top leaders--the epithet "international criminal" has been properly scrawled under postings of their visages.

In its economic impact at home, George Bush's "war-on-the-cuff" has been scored as one of the three main causes of our 2007 financial collapse and the Great Recession which followed—a calamity which continues to plague us today. The war exposed us as a superpower with extraordinary technical and military strengths, but with little depth and sophistication. Having only superficial understanding of the region, and with pathetic little knowledge of the people, their language, and their religion or culture our President audaciously attacked a sovereign nation. At the head of the world's most lavishly supplied and costly military (we spend more on our armed forces than all the other world nations combined!) we swept a pathetic enemy before us like desert rats and quickly and easily occupied Baghdad. But once there our bumbling attempts at imperial occupation led to chaos and disaster.

On all fronts the war failed. The lightly concealed real objectives of the war were to carve out a petroleum rich nation for our oil companies to exploit. As well, our military display was meant to demonstrate our overarching military power, perhaps to dissuade potential terrorists, or to put fear into our regional "enemies" Iran, Russia and China. But as the war wore on, with displays of grandiosity (our "embassy" the size of a small city state in Europe) and exposes of torture and brutality at Abu Ghrahib as well as revelations of incompetence in the face of a stubborn and determined insurgent population, the war became the quagmire some had predicted. The conflict, instead of publicizing our strengths, revealed our incompetence, arrogance and the limits of our military power.

Our President's war on Iraq sullied our national reputation, and aroused much of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims against us and our erstwhile allies in the region. Futhermore the war encouraged the nuclear arms race. In the face of our awsome attack on Iraq what world leader could not have noticed the strrategic advantages of a nuclear arsenal? Could they ignore the fact of our ability to invade and dominate a non-nuclear Iraq, while nuclear armed North Korea only experienced attempts at harsh diplomacy from us.

As we had hoped, our intervention did alter the local political situation--but not to our advantage . Without clearly thinking through the results of our invasion and occupation, we found our actions to be largely counter productive. For one, it enhanced the power of neighboring Iran by eliminating Iraq as a military counterpoise, creating a new regional problem for our leaders. For another, we appear to have opened economic opportunities for China which is today making oil deals in Iraq, and opening mineral mines in Afghanistan as we case our battle flags and prepare to leave. The fierce resistance of the Iraqis to American occupation and our inability to establish a pliant Iraqi "democracy" means we leave Iraq with no more leverage than what we had over the old Iraq. Rather than a demonstration of power, our failures in Iraq gave strength and encouragement to other Arab popular opposition groups in surrounding nations. The chaos in Iraq in no small way helped to stimulate and encourage the Arab Spring...a political movement which has to-date radically changed the political landscape (and not to our advantage) in a wide swath across the Arab world.

It is well this war is over. Without public condemnation, it seems that now only God may forgive those of our leaders with the blood of our nation's troops and of innocent civilians on their hands. If only it were true that we as a nation learned something from our mistakes and setbacks. Alas, listening last night to the Republican side of our quadrennial political discourse, it appears that we have understood little and digested less of our recent past in Iraq. Due to our unwillingness and/or inability to face up to our mistakes and failures, we are relegated to repeat them over and over again. I fear we have suffered much and profited nothing from our travails these last nine years.

Will we all have to live on in silence with the continuing fall-out of this monumental disaster? Have our young men and women who sacrificed their bodies and lives done so in vain? Have we wasted trillions of dollars and years of national effort? The answer to these questions is sadly, yes. But only if we continue to sweep the past under the rug and fail to honestly reevaluate our mistakes and their causes--and in no certain terms condemn those who so horribly lead us astray.



Get the picture?