I am not naïve; I know that the United States is in Iraq and that isn't going to change very soon. The Republicans and the Bush administration don't listen to anyone about anything, because they have already proclaimed to themselves that they know everything. The Dubai Ports deal illustrates how they don't listen, even when members of their own party are telling them that it wasn't going to happen. Newsweek magazine showed us this last week by the
story written by Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey. They paint a picture of Dick Cheney asking House Speaker Dennis Hastert what it was going to take to make the ports deal work. The idea that Dick Cheney, and the White House would ignore the American people shouldn't surprise anyone. But, the fact that he would ignore Republican politicians that are up for election in November of this year should surprise us.
After all, these guys walked the Party line and talked the Party line for these guys in the White House for the last five years. Maybe this is part of the 2006 Republican campaign strategy. I wouldn't be surprised, because these are the same people who believe that using Bush's inability to talk in public as a political asset.
But, on the third anniversary of start of the Iraq War we should review the history of this debacle in order to learn what we should never allow to happen in the future. We are in Iraq and nothing can be done about it. However, if a neighbor kid threw his baseball through your window would you just say that the window was broken and nothing could be done about it? Even if it was an accident, shouldn't the kid who comes to claim the baseball answer for the damage? Most of us believe that actions also have responsibilities and obligations.
There was an excellent 9-minute audio review of the build up to the war and these three years broadcast this morning on NPR. The audio includes quotes of what the White House said in the build up to the war and what actually has happened.
I believe that we have all heard most of this stuff before, but it is certainly nice to have a review from time to time. In fact in this case where the Bush administration and the Republican congress seems to move the goal lines every other week we tend to forget why we actually went to Iraq in 2003 and what our goals were back then. I encourage everyone to listen to this.
There is also a new book out called "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq" by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor that covers the Iraq War. More and more of these books will come out and show what went wrong, and what continues to go wrong in Iraq. Back in 2003 the Republican man on the street voiced his dismay at the War Protestors. And today with 20-20 hindsight we know that those War Protestors had a point.
Most people know that pacifism is not a true option in a real world. And, most Americans stand behind the operation in Afghanistan, even though it isn't going as well as it could. But, the points that were missed at the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003 mainly had to do with examination of the purpose of the Iraq War, the goals and the benefit to the American people. If we look at the last three years we should all be able to stand back and look at this. Does the cost justify the benefit to the American people?
Republicans have lost every justification for this war, except the fact that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy and Iraq is better off without him. Every claim about WMD and ties to terrorists has been shown to be false. But, what was it that persuaded the congress and the American people to support the overthrow of a sovereign nation? It was the marketing of the war as a necessary evil that Americans needed to take on to protect Americans. And Americans believed that to question this must somehow be unpatriotic. And the delay required to question this could have allowed Iraq to attack us with nuclear weapons.
However, the dishonesty of the White House used words like "Weapons of Mass Destruction" which include nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to be used to describe chemical weapons that everyone believe Iraq had. So, the administration was able to go from warning us of the dangers of Iraq's possession of chemical weapons to warning us of imminent nuclear threat by tying these two types of weapons together by the WMD label. So, the administration was able to use the knowledge that the CIA believed that Iraq had chemical weapons to say that Iraq had WMDs. When everyone agreed that "we all know" that Iraq has WMDs, then were able to proclaim that we need to attack Iraq before the "smoking gun becomes a mushroom cloud."
When the Vietnam War ended, common knowledge became "Vietnam could never happen again." The common man believed that the US invasion of a sovereign nation based on selfish interest could never happen in America, because America just doesn't do that. America believes in Democracy. But we now know that America believes in Democracy as long and the vote comes out the way we like. America's common knowledge is in flux again. In a few years our cultural common knowledge will become established again. Hopefully it will become known that government needs to be watched and questioned at all levels. Hopefully the people will come to the conclusion that Iraq can happen again, unless the people remain vigilant.
Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit