Now the world is mine! Everybody gotta sing! Everybody gotta PRAISE! Everybody gotta...!
"I think there is one good thing that has come out of this war in Iraq... let's be honest... 10,000 less Iraqis! HAHAHAHAHA! Yeah! Come on, people! Those people have fucked with us never." -- David Cross, 2004
More like 35,000 now. Splitting the difference between the estimates. And that's reported deaths.
Three years. Or, if you like, "Mission Accomplished + 687."
For the record, I hated America first. March 17, 2003:
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After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration received high marks for their subsequent handling of the response, as well they should have. We can argue all day about military tactics and the morality of war in general, but overall, the response was (I thought) a good one. The Bush team spent weeks getting the armed forces ready, all the while actively building a worldwide coalition, and then went in and performed what was a relatively clean, quick military operation, or at least as close as one could get.
That has not been the case with Iraq. I want to stress that I'm being pragmatic here, not romantic: I'm not talking about war in general. I think this war is unjustified, badly timed, terribly arranged, and poorly thought out. Not in a military sense, of course -- the plans to invade Iraq have been drawn up for a long time -- but in every other sense. I have yet to see someone seriously address the issue of why other countries - not even despots with nuclear capability who are our allies, mind you, but fellow "Axis of Evil"* countries like North Korea - are not more worthy of our focus. To which most pro-war people respond, "So you want us to invade Korea?" No. But it'd make more sense than this war.
Of course, one of the reasons Iraq is being invaded is because they don't have any big bad weapons yet, unlike North Korea. Their army is also decimated. This operation will be a success, and likely a quick one, reports of urban combat notwithstanding. Again, however, Saddam's particular brand of despotism is about average by worldwide standards. He's a murderous bastard, but all despots are. It's part of the job description. Furthermore, I don't understand why saving Iraqis from Saddam is our job, and why this particular wrong needs righting more than the dozens of others happening around the world. Pushing Saddam out of Kuwait in the Gulf War at least made sense from one perspective - maintaining stability in the region, for various economic and political purposes - but there's no trigger this time, nothing to suggest that an immediate full-scale war is necessary. Whether you think Bush is after oil, land, democracy, or all three, it's not enough reason to justify an action of this size and scope, in my opinion.
Does Saddam have WMDs? Not yet. Will he? Certainly, given time. Would he use them on us? Yes, if he could. I don't for a minute doubt any of those things. The question remains, however: with our deflated economy, the minimal threat Saddam poses at this time, the other madmen with more advanced weapons programs, the way we're squandering the international goodwill we've built up since the WTC tragedy, the possible loss of American life, Osama and most of his high-ranking toadies still at large, the incredible amount of money we're giving countries to ensure their cooperation, the similarly huge amounts of money and people needed to set up and maintain a US-friendly government after the war is over, and the way this war is sure to solidify and intensify anti-American sentiment amongst terrorist groups, is this the most expedient use of our resources at this time? I submit that it is not.
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Ha! I thought they knew what they were doing. But then, so did they. And they had intel.
Actually, I don't hate America, or our troops, or Republicans, or conservatives, or even war necessarily, only this administration. And I certainly wasn't the first person to be against the war... I had to sift through the evidence first.
Of which there was none. Of course, you could be understandably upset that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who gasses civilians... but then you'd have to explain not being upset about it until 2003, when it happened in March 1988. Then you'd also have to explain how Omar al-Bashir, Kim Jong-il, Than Shwe, Robert Mugabe, Islam Karimov, Hu Jintao, King Abdullah, Saparmurat Niyazov, Seyed Ali Khamane’i, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema were somehow deemed less important, their countries less worthy of rescue. (Those are the Top Ten dictators in the world, as ranked by Parade magazine. Parade, for God's sake.) And think about this: the crimes he's standing trial for now happened in 1982. So why did the US maintain friendly relations with him well afterwards? And why wait two decades to go after him?
Some of you can guess why. I'll just tell you what I think: Bush's recent discovery that the US has become "addicted to oil" is his white flag. It's a sign that this unnecessary and horribly-managed war, which removed the center of an entire nation's power structure without any idea of how to replace it, is already over. That doesn't mean we're leaving, of course -- we've still got troops maintaining stability in other areas of the world we've actually conquered. But the battle to win Iraq is over.
Not because there's anything wrong with America, although there is... there's always something wrong with 300 million people, because they're 300 million people. It's because there's something different about Iraq. You can't make democracy grow in a theocracy. You can't impose "one man, one vote" in a country that's built on a thousand years of tribalism. They have to want it. They don't. Terrorism and insurgencies are supported by the people. They are the people. We learned this lesson in Vietnam.
I'll do you a favor and not even reiterate everything you've already heard about the non-existent ties between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, or the way we squandered international goodwill, or how the country we used that goodwill for -- Afghanistan -- has not become a land of milk and honey with justice and tolerance for all. It ain't happening. The Bush administration never admits incompetence, much less defeat, but they know. The only question now is how to do it... how to pull enough forces out of the country to save face and put this issue on the back burner. It's like fumbling for the pin of a hand grenade in the dark... you can find it, and you can put it back in time, maybe, but what happens when you let go? Who the fuck knows?
I don't pretend to have any answers, either... all I know is what most of us already know, and that's what a mistake this was. The history books, as with Vietnam, will no doubt rewrite this story as a necessary war that was run wrong. But there's no honor or dignity in dying for what amounts to nothing. I wouldn't want one more person, on either side, to die for that.
More like 35,000 now. Splitting the difference between the estimates. And that's reported deaths.
Three years. Or, if you like, "Mission Accomplished + 687."
For the record, I hated America first. March 17, 2003:
---
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration received high marks for their subsequent handling of the response, as well they should have. We can argue all day about military tactics and the morality of war in general, but overall, the response was (I thought) a good one. The Bush team spent weeks getting the armed forces ready, all the while actively building a worldwide coalition, and then went in and performed what was a relatively clean, quick military operation, or at least as close as one could get.
That has not been the case with Iraq. I want to stress that I'm being pragmatic here, not romantic: I'm not talking about war in general. I think this war is unjustified, badly timed, terribly arranged, and poorly thought out. Not in a military sense, of course -- the plans to invade Iraq have been drawn up for a long time -- but in every other sense. I have yet to see someone seriously address the issue of why other countries - not even despots with nuclear capability who are our allies, mind you, but fellow "Axis of Evil"* countries like North Korea - are not more worthy of our focus. To which most pro-war people respond, "So you want us to invade Korea?" No. But it'd make more sense than this war.
Of course, one of the reasons Iraq is being invaded is because they don't have any big bad weapons yet, unlike North Korea. Their army is also decimated. This operation will be a success, and likely a quick one, reports of urban combat notwithstanding. Again, however, Saddam's particular brand of despotism is about average by worldwide standards. He's a murderous bastard, but all despots are. It's part of the job description. Furthermore, I don't understand why saving Iraqis from Saddam is our job, and why this particular wrong needs righting more than the dozens of others happening around the world. Pushing Saddam out of Kuwait in the Gulf War at least made sense from one perspective - maintaining stability in the region, for various economic and political purposes - but there's no trigger this time, nothing to suggest that an immediate full-scale war is necessary. Whether you think Bush is after oil, land, democracy, or all three, it's not enough reason to justify an action of this size and scope, in my opinion.
Does Saddam have WMDs? Not yet. Will he? Certainly, given time. Would he use them on us? Yes, if he could. I don't for a minute doubt any of those things. The question remains, however: with our deflated economy, the minimal threat Saddam poses at this time, the other madmen with more advanced weapons programs, the way we're squandering the international goodwill we've built up since the WTC tragedy, the possible loss of American life, Osama and most of his high-ranking toadies still at large, the incredible amount of money we're giving countries to ensure their cooperation, the similarly huge amounts of money and people needed to set up and maintain a US-friendly government after the war is over, and the way this war is sure to solidify and intensify anti-American sentiment amongst terrorist groups, is this the most expedient use of our resources at this time? I submit that it is not.
---
Ha! I thought they knew what they were doing. But then, so did they. And they had intel.
Actually, I don't hate America, or our troops, or Republicans, or conservatives, or even war necessarily, only this administration. And I certainly wasn't the first person to be against the war... I had to sift through the evidence first.
Of which there was none. Of course, you could be understandably upset that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who gasses civilians... but then you'd have to explain not being upset about it until 2003, when it happened in March 1988. Then you'd also have to explain how Omar al-Bashir, Kim Jong-il, Than Shwe, Robert Mugabe, Islam Karimov, Hu Jintao, King Abdullah, Saparmurat Niyazov, Seyed Ali Khamane’i, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema were somehow deemed less important, their countries less worthy of rescue. (Those are the Top Ten dictators in the world, as ranked by Parade magazine. Parade, for God's sake.) And think about this: the crimes he's standing trial for now happened in 1982. So why did the US maintain friendly relations with him well afterwards? And why wait two decades to go after him?
Some of you can guess why. I'll just tell you what I think: Bush's recent discovery that the US has become "addicted to oil" is his white flag. It's a sign that this unnecessary and horribly-managed war, which removed the center of an entire nation's power structure without any idea of how to replace it, is already over. That doesn't mean we're leaving, of course -- we've still got troops maintaining stability in other areas of the world we've actually conquered. But the battle to win Iraq is over.
Not because there's anything wrong with America, although there is... there's always something wrong with 300 million people, because they're 300 million people. It's because there's something different about Iraq. You can't make democracy grow in a theocracy. You can't impose "one man, one vote" in a country that's built on a thousand years of tribalism. They have to want it. They don't. Terrorism and insurgencies are supported by the people. They are the people. We learned this lesson in Vietnam.
I'll do you a favor and not even reiterate everything you've already heard about the non-existent ties between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, or the way we squandered international goodwill, or how the country we used that goodwill for -- Afghanistan -- has not become a land of milk and honey with justice and tolerance for all. It ain't happening. The Bush administration never admits incompetence, much less defeat, but they know. The only question now is how to do it... how to pull enough forces out of the country to save face and put this issue on the back burner. It's like fumbling for the pin of a hand grenade in the dark... you can find it, and you can put it back in time, maybe, but what happens when you let go? Who the fuck knows?
I don't pretend to have any answers, either... all I know is what most of us already know, and that's what a mistake this was. The history books, as with Vietnam, will no doubt rewrite this story as a necessary war that was run wrong. But there's no honor or dignity in dying for what amounts to nothing. I wouldn't want one more person, on either side, to die for that.