This isn't going to be pretty. I've had it. I simply cannot take anymore of the crap served up in the media day after day after day about "building democracy" in Iraq, "finishing the job" or "as they stand-up, we stand down."
Does anyone anywhere know even one person who woke up on September 12 and said: "What we need to do now is build democracy in Iraq."? Was there one person on the entire planet who looked at the smoking ruins and asked: "How many US troops do you think will be required to make the streets of Tikrit safe?" We frigging know that nobody involved in actually organizing this cockamamy catastrophe we've come to know as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" gave these questions a moment's thought. And now, every day we have supposedly sensible folks putting on their most serious faces in order to conceal their one true concern:
"I hope nobody figures out I never cared about Iraqis. Pretending I do is such a pain in the ass."
How bad is it? The current gabfest makes Richard Cohen seem like a portrait in self-reflection.
I'm not even going to bother to link to Richard's:
"After 9/11 we all kind of went nuts."
Andrew Sullivan, now that his taste for war has grown cold, explains his own shrieks for bloody mayhem as an excess of prudency: "After 9/11, we couldn't be too careful"
WTF?
Did Sullivan say something about being careful? He doesn't know how to drive a car; and this clown is waxing eloquent about invading a country? Does anyone remember Andrew thrilling to the idea of happy Iraqis in the days after 9/11? Or in the run-up to Fallujah, the town "where innocents are few and far between.".
When you think of careful do you think Bush? Cheney? Rumsfeld? Rice? Tenet? Careful?
Can't be too careful? George Bush, who as Governor of Texas set a record for executions and spent less than thirty minutes on average reviewing each case? The same guy giving him legal advice then is now in charge of excusing American torture and illegal wiretaps. Careful?
Can't be too careful? Bush went of vacation for six weeks in the run-up to 9/11. He was shown a memo stating OBL would use hijacked planes to hit US targets and Sullivan is talking can't be too careful? The media shovelled BS so thick and fast that it took a second term election and New Orleans flooding before the media started to question whether the word careful should be used in the same sentence as Bush, or "shoot him in the face".
Tom Friedman, of all the ditto-heads, actually came closest to telling the truth way back when while selling his book and the case for war. On one talk show "six months" calmly asserted words to the effect of: "Because of 9/11, brown people have to die!"
The alpha and omega of Operation Iraqi Freedom was to kill as many brown, bearded Muslim type fellars and their wives, kids, grandparents and pets as possible; before the UN or world community dragged America off the bloody pile of corpses. The invasion of Iraq, for most who supported the war, involved nothing more than skull-f**king the entire country and inflicting as much pain, death and degradation as possible without letting too many US men and women get maimed or killed.
Of course, a few acceptable casualties are necessary for realism; and to create the frisson only present when real bullets are flying both ways. On TV, of course, I hasten to add. We're not talking about folks in America actually getting their hands dirty or bloody; or risking danger. That's what Marines are for, right Jonah? Rich? Hugh? No question of missing an episode of 24 or maybe giving your kid the chance to learn how to help daddy into his prosthetic device.
Well, a few seasons of Jack Bauer have come and gone and for some reason those pesky Iraqis just keep shooting each other and any Americans they can find. The "liberal" media knows that Death sells just like SEX and even better if you can get them back to back. Stay tuned for the latest bombing from Iraq. Except that Americans are starting to tune out.
Didn't the media get the message?
Iraq was supposed to be a six-week ass-kicking extravaganza. A summer special; a rerun of Desert Storm's "Road of Death". That's how Tommy and Donny planned it. That's how it was sold. That's certainly what the folks who went there thought was going to happen.
"Remember 9/11", not "let's build democracy" is what was stenciled onto helmets and you can bet that Marines were not thinking of giving Iraqis safer schools when they pounded into Fallujah. Sticking around three years and doing two or more tours in Anwar province had to be the last thing on any of their minds.
The problem is the whole Iraqi "freedom" exercise is taking too long. America is now sick of Iraq, the folks who planned it and the mounting stack of lies papering over the crime.
For most fans of war, Iraq was never about oil, democracy, WMD, or Osama.
It was about killing as many Iraqis as possible and leaving the country choking on blood and dust; and then going on and doing the same thing in Syria and maybe Iran. Muslim killing Muslim, not by American hands, isn't anywhere near as interesting; and many Americans couldn't care less.
Some Americans have bought into the fictions big-time, others just mouth the words. And of course, some are getting rich off the war. But at the end of the day, the ass-whupping didn't turn out to be nearly as much fun as planned. Most Americans now wish the war had never happened; are already looking forward to a new diversion. Others, the diehards, fume at the continued confusion and dream of bunker busting nukes that will wipe the smiles of Muslims and their America-hating friends, literally, from the face of the earth.
If anyone reading this is serving in Iraq now, God bless. You're likely over there for reasons very different than I've cited here. The time period of bloody revenge I'm talking about falls between 9/11 and 2003. Please stay safe and don't shoot anyone by mistake.
As for the rest, the invasion of Iraq was the worst possible reaction to 9/11, a day of tragedy that allowed many to bray and howl for blood like beasts. We're living with the consequences of a cold-blooded, calculated descent into savagery.
I've got no advice beyond: get folks out of there as fast as we can. Don't surrender to the same blood-lust again. I sincerely pray some good does come out of this, because God knows the reasons for going into Iraq were all bad.
Sorry about the lack of links. I'm going to lie down.