WAR AND LIES
Is Iraq the disaster to focus on?
rawstory.com
By Hannah Selinger | RAW STORY COLUMNIST
It is becoming more and more difficult to understand the situation in Iraq.
On Monday, the New York Times reported that a suicide bomber had, “appeared in Musayyib, a poor town just south of Baghdad, and blew himself up under a fuel tanker on Saturday night, igniting a fireball that engulfed cars, shops, and homes. At least 71 people died: 156 were wounded. Some bodies were badly charred, making identification difficult.”
Pardon the cynicism, but this doesn’t sound like a country that has recently found democracy.
It has been pretty easy to ignore Iraq for the past few months. There have been no major crises, and, as Americans, we are perfectly comfortable with ignoring the suicide bombing du jour. It’s summertime Stateside, so some of the kick has gone out of the punch in terms of dealing with international politics. In the week and a half since the London terrorist attacks, I have yet to hear any Americans—and by Americans I mean every day subway-riding Americans—discuss the issue at length. Our priorities are elsewhere.
But I’ll come right out and say it: Iraq is a disaster. The insurgency has not decreased since immediately after we removed Saddam Hussein from power; to the contrary. The seriousness of the attacks has only increased.
Here in the States, our President is keeping mum about all sorts of things. The irony is this: last week, a New York Times reporter was sent to prison for failing to reveal the source of an article she never wrote. Okay. Fine.
But now that it has become clear that the Prez’s right-hand-man, Karl Rove, did something equally criminal, by giving away the identity of operative Valerie Plume, no one wants to take any responsibility. The President hasn’t asked for Rove’s resignation, nor has he publicly made mention of Rove’s possibly (and probably) unethical behavior in giving away the identity of a member of the CIA. Reports the Times, “Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time Magazine, said the White House senior advisor Karl Rove was the first person to tell him that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was a C.I.A. officer, according to a first-person account in this week’s issue of the magazine.” Oops. When it comes to the moral crusade, apparently the President’s friends need not worry.
Which isn’t precisely the point, except that it elucidates, once again, the true character of the man who engaged us in a war that will seemingly never end. Even if we are to believe that Iraq is better off with our help than it would be without, no one would dare argue that things are going well over there. Here in the U.S., we are arguing about Supreme Court appointments, about litmus tests and judges who will or will not support the Executive Branch’s obviously biased agenda.
And it all begs the question: What about Iraq? How do we reconcile what we’ve created, 71 people dead in one evening and the dreaded responsibility of knowing that some of this is our fault? Argue all you want that the insurgency is not rooted in the American folly of invading Iraq, but let’s be fair here. Before we entered Iraq, civilians were not being murdered by suicide bombers and before we entered Iraq, American casualties were relegated to other wars in other countries.
Leave the diplomatic issues of democracy and government to other, better columnists. Debating whether we should have left Iraq to their fundamentalist ways or whether they will be better off adopting our flawed way of doing business is not really the point. During all that time where we aren’t paying attention, people are still dying. It is likely that they would be dying either way, since we have bombed their homes and tainted their water supply, but on the most base level, they are dying because they have become the casualties of anger against us.
One wonders how many more people will die before the President steps up to the plate. As a Commander-in-Chief, he has been nothing short of embarrassing. He has waged war, taken the poorest Americans and recruited them for a military lost cause, and turned his back on a poverty-stricken country that he planned, two years ago, to “shock and awe.” From what I can tell, he has no moral standards whatsoever, even as he preaches the value of life to the American people.
Perhaps engaging in the wrong war is not an impeachable offense, but, then again, who thought receiving fellatio in the Oval Office would bring the country to its knees (no pun intended)? The one thing our country has not outgrown is change, which is, at this juncture, our only hope for national preservation.
As Raw Story's regular columnist rotation resumes this summer, Hannah Selinger will be found each Tuesday on Raw Story.
Also watch for the returns of Nancy Goldstein (August 4,) and Avery Walker (tomorrow,) as well as an exciting lineup of established guest columnists throughout the summer. |
