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Another KO special from the diaries -- kos)
In times like these, it's important to keep one salient fact on the table at all times:
The ambitious, inflexible, small-minded prigs who currently run the United States government are wrong. They are:
- wrong about Iraq
- wrong about terror
- wrong about what makes us safe
- and they are wrong about what makes us strong
It is no surprise, however, that in the wake of the recent tragedy in London, that the GOP and the nattering, blathering nabobs who dominate our airwaves will tell
us....with a straight face no less, and in the name of "spreading Democracy"...that we who disagree with them should simply
shut up.
Interesting that.
I'm not going to shut up, and neither should you.
First off, as a city dweller and a public transit user, my heart goes out to London and its citizens. All of us who ride the rails in big cities around the world are thinking of you and your loss right now.
Second, I would like acknowledge how much my analysis owes to a good friend of mine here....awol...whose linked comment dovetails with so much of what I am about to say, and whose words have sharpened and honed my own....on with the essay:
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I wrote last summer that only with the defeat of George Bush would we as a nation get a chance to sort through what happened to all of us and to our world on September 11th, 2001. Despite our best efforts, that did not happen.
We did not get a chance, without the Bush Administration defensively hiding, obfuscating and lying about its own actions, to sift through the events leading up to and following 9/11 and draw our own conclusions in the sober light of day. At the same time, over the course of the 2004 campaign we were subjected to the appropriation of the events of 9/11 for political purposes. We know this is true.
The GOP has made a political linkage of our national tragedy to their political party.
Think about that for a second. 9/11 happened to all of us, with the heaviest burden suffered by New York City...but it was George Bush who used actual footage of flag draped coffins from Ground Zero in his campaign ads. It was the GOP that spent their convention sanctimoniously invoking the events of that day over and over again. It was Dick Cheney who invoked the fear of more attacks, and Condoleeza Rice who used the phrase "a mushroom cloud" to justify invading Iraq.
That was no accident.
From the very beginning the events of 9/11 and "the war on terror" have been used to reshape our political landscape and our national security priorities. From the very beginning, even at the time of George Bush's initial speech before a united Congress just days after the attacks...there was a plan afoot to make 9/11 mean one thing: a war in Iraq to reshape the Middle East....a war that this Administration had been planning since before 9/11.
Now, in July of 2005, with another attack, this time in London, and George Bush's war in Iraq entering it's third year in full swing with no end in sight, it is quite clear to all of us that a brutal equation is in full force:
9/11 = Iraq
the "war on terror" = Iraq
our response to al Qaeda = Iraq
the bulk of our spending in response to terror = Iraq
our response to any new attack anywhere in the world = Iraq
And we all know....even those blathering AM radio hate-jockeys know...that the war in Iraq, unlike our forgotten and ongoing war in Afghanistan, was based on an outright lie.
Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. And further, there were no WMD in Iraq. Neither of these rationales for war in Iraq justified sending our citizens to fight and die there. Simply put, there was no threat.
Dick Cheney can sputter till he's blue in the face. He can lie through his teeth again and again....heck, he's done so repeatedly. But Dick Cheney can't change the fact that he and George Bush made our national response to 9/11 a unilateral, highly divisive invasion of Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11 or WMD. Nothing. Zero. Nada.
And so we have passed through the looking glass.
In the wake of bombings in London that have the hallmark signature of al Qaeda...our world is asked, once again, to recommit to George Bush and Tony Blair's advocacy of this war.
And if we speak up against this insanity we are told to shut up. If we state the obvious: that more attacks don't retroactively justify a misguided, poorly executed war that was based on an outright lie: we are told, simply put, that we should be silent.
In a nutshell, the GOP has determined that our response to 9/11 or any new act of terror is...Iraq....and if you disagree with that equation, you are weak and evil. Friends, we have passed through the looking glass.
It didn't have to be this way.
Those who attacked the United States on September 11th, 2001 had us in their sights long before George Bush became President. If their goal, however, was to destabilize the United States and lure us into the misuse of our own power, they have succeeded thanks in large part to none other than George W. Bush. There is no hiding from this.
Strength is best expressed in the potential use of force. Our national security is best expressed by wars we don't fight and diplomatic successes we do win. And while, sometimes, in the course of events, we must use force, and must be ready to do so at all times and win; our strength is best expressed by the victories we win without firing a gun or shooting a missile.
That logic is what civilization and democracy is about on a bedrock level, and we all know it. That equation is one of our core values. It is not, however, George Bush's.
Every time a great power uses force is a situation fraught with potential downsides. First, because the use of force represents a failure of diplomatic and tactical pressures. And second, because failure in the use of force greatly reduces the perceived power of any nation. This is why, when great nations absolutely need to go to war, they build coalitions that guarantee that they will prevail, and ask every one of their citizens to make sacrifices in support of the cause.
That is the catch-22 of Iraq....just as it was the catch-22 of Viet Nam. We are pouring more and more of our resources into this fight...the wrong fight, in the wrong place, at the very worst time...not because it is reaping benefits.
It isn't.
Nor are we are pouring resources and our fellow citizen-soldiers lives into Iraq because it has proven highly effective at stopping acts of terror.
It hasn't.
We are fighting in Iraq because once George Bush misguidedly committed our great nation to this project the cost of failure was much too high for us to let it fail.
It is now this simple: If we weren't threatened by the situation in Iraq before our invasion: we certainly are now.
But given this state of affairs, and the dire events in London...we see it made all the more clear that the time is now, more than ever, for the great nations of the world, and responsible citizens everywhere, to stand together in the face of the threat of terror. It is not too late to resolve the "looking glass" that George Bush has made of Iraq and face terror the way we should have from the very beginning: directly in the eye.
For starters, in regards to Iraq,
we need to break the looking glass, we need to
break the equation that Bush has made between Iraq and 9/11 and get on with the
real business of responding to the events of that infamous day and al Qaeda like we should have in the first place.
This will take work and pragmatism...and since I am in a "put or shut up" frame of mind...I would like to spell out at least a sketch of what is to be done.
On Iraq, the answer is simple to say and hard to do. We need to broker an international framework to get the United States out without Iraq becoming a "failed state." We need to get our troops out.
For this to happen we need all parties on board, especialy inside Iraq. And, yes, we need the United Nations. And in getting the UN involved we need realpolitik to bring cooperation from France, Germany, Japan, China and Russia and the broader Arab world. And, yes, this does mean military cooperation from these nations as unlikely as that sounds. You can call this ambitious or "pie in the sky." Of course, the Bush Administration has had two years of outright failure and we still don't know what the plan is or how much money we will spend there....or how many more of our citizens will give their lives.
As part of this transition to UN oversight, to a "new coalition"...the United States Military and big oil will have to yield their monopolies in Iraq. Iraq will not be simply an outpost of our military and our big companies. And as the international community builds a long term stake in preserving security and stabilty in Iraq, the US and British role will shrink, but not disappear, both militarily and economically. And it should be so. We all know this is true: at the end of the day, Iraq belongs to the Iraqis.
In a nutshell my view can be summed up in this statement: success at creating a framework for bringing our troops home IS success in Iraq.
That should be our priority and our policy. Simply put, that is now "our job" in Iraq, to get out and leave behind a structure that we don't monopolize or control. Indeed, just stating this goal and backing it up with action might begin to change things on the ground in Iraq.
I am convinced that we need to bring our troops home so that we can get on with the real confrontation with terror and those who attacked us on 9/11. We need to bring our troops home from Iraq so that we can do what we should have done in the first place in response to 9/11:
(I know this is unduly long, but bear with me....I think that having expressed my anti-Iraq war thoughts here I need to spell this out as well. In no uncertain terms. Folks need to see our alternate paradigm.)
#1: We need to build a new security infrastructure...a grid of investments in security that make us more safe, and, importantly, ensure that our nation will function even if we are attacked.
Simply put. Our first response to 9/11 should have been to do everything in our power to make our nation more safe and frustrate the ability of anyone to disrupt the function of our society at a whole.
Almost counter-intuitively, we need to focus on security infrastructure first.
Port security. Airline Security. Power and Water supply. Roadway and Transportation security. Urban and Industrial security. Internet security. Emergency Response infrastructure. Our Health Care and First Responders. Border security. By making the support structures of our society less vulnerable, we the citizens become less vulnerable as well, less vulnerable to attack and less vulnerable if attacked. This is absolute common sense....and should have been our largest investment.
However, George Bush and the GOP don't get this.
Simply put, if you make it harder to derail America...you make American citizens safer.
Yes, we are never going to be "safe" the way the Department of Homeland security implies. There will never be a day where the threat level is zero. But the lesson of 9/11 is that there never was a day like that. Our response, in light of 9/11 should have been to say, with bitter hindsight, that we could have been safer. Much more so. And we should have quickly got about the business of making it all of our job #1 to do that.
#2: We need to mount a permanent international law enforcement effort to root out al Qaeda and anyone who would threaten our Democracy and our citizens. If it takes military action to aid this law enforcement effort...so be it. But our goal should be to bring those responsible for 9/11 to justice right here in the United States.
We all know this true. And we all know that the GOP has failed us starkly in this regard. Societies governed by law don't abandon those laws when threatened. In fact, that is the last moment you should abandon the Constitution. But that is just what we have done, and it is a powerful signal to our enemies.
In contrast, I can think of no more powerful symbol than seeing the leaders of al Qaeda on federal trial here in the United States. That should be our goal. But it isn't, and hasn't been pursued.
Capture. Trial. Justice. The break up of the al Qaeda network in cooperation with the aid of our friends and allies around the world. And the formation of a permanent international effort to root out threats to stability and our democracy whatever form they take.
This would be common sense. And we can start this today in response to the attacks in London and in cooperation with our allies.
#3: Finally, we need to drain the ideological swamp that breeds terrorism.
Simply put, terror's greatest asset is its ability to recruit members willing and alienated enough to do it's bidding. Less recruits = less terror. It's an equation George Bush should have thought about when he pipped, "bring 'em on."
- Many of these recruits are from societies that are highly undemocratic. We can do something about that, and should.
- Many of them are bothered by hypocrisies inherent in Western policy regarding Saudi Arabia and Israel. We can do something about that, and should.
- Many of them are appalled at the the imbalance of development between the West and the Muslim world. We can do something about that as well. Why aren't we?
After 9/11 we should have made it our business to have an impact in all of these areas. Instead, we went to war in Iraq. Why is that?
In part, it does come down to geo-politics and to oil.
We have known in the industrial world, and here in the U.S. in particular...for decades... that our dependence on foreign oil has distorted our foreign policy towards the Middle East. We have now fought two wars in Iraq, with no resolution or stability in sight.
And it is in light of this situation that I am left with a final question today. And even though BushCo. is most interested in shutting us up and calling us unpatriotic for being green....I'll ask it anyway:
Isn't it high time for patriotic Americans to ask: when is our Government going to get serious about our depedence on oil from the Middle East?