Our mission in Iraq has mutated
By IVAN GOLDMAN
GUEST COLUMNIST
One of the oddest features of our strange, strange war in Iraq is that we're still trying to figure out the mission. Oil? Religious zealotry? Revenge? Glory? What?
Some critics say President Bush has failed to define just what it is we're trying to do there, but he and his handlers have defined it over and over. The trouble is, just about everyone understands by now that they've been lying all along. So media questioners twist themselves into pretzels trying to figure out some polite way of asking them to tell the truth, just once.
Each time Bush and the other members of his political rat pack alter their talking points they immediately spread the word to all those in the administration allowed to speak. And one element of the new instructions is to excise the latest excuse that's been exposed as bogus. Instead of admitting they were mistaken or not telling the truth, they just make the old excuse inoperable. We're supposed to erase it from our memory banks the same way they erase it from their latest explanation. Among reasons no longer operable are the specter of mushroom clouds, smallpox and nerve gas, plus the fact that Saddam Hussein gassed his own people (during the reign of Bush One). The al-Qaida-connections excuse receded for awhile, but it's back on the list because these days some of the people attacking our troops are in fact al-Qaida-connected. What's not mentioned is that they joined the cause only after we invaded Iraq, leaving a long trail of dead, disabled, homeless, unemployed residents who were supposed to thank us.
As Iraqis who used to be at the mercy of Saddam's bandits are now besieged by anyone with a Kalashnikov, a cause and a criminal mentality, we Americans hear that the latest mutation of our real mission is to create a democracy that will be a light of lights for the entire Mideast. So far this particular mission is giving an assist to those Iraqis seeking to shove the country into the pitiless horror of a Shiite theocracy that shows every sign of being even crazier and more intolerant than its Iranian model next door. Its leaders already are dispersing gangs that execute liquor store owners and beat women they perceive as disrespectful. They also murdered American reporter Steven Vincent after he reported these events in Basra in The New York Times.
Yes, some of our new allies are a little raw, but what the heck, this war already has brought us shoulder to shoulder with Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov, whose torture police have been known to boil people alive. So helping out a few more hideous totalitarians is no big deal.
Bush and his aggressively incompetent collection of business-suited bunglers paid to think up some kind of mission are running out of any that have even the slightest connection to reason or reality. That's why, exposed by tough, smart, bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan, they retreat to the Bush-bunker and speak to their base -- the greed-crazed tax haters, Christian ayatollahs, racists, gun worshippers and innocent but deluded souls who got Bush appointed in the first place. Those gangs of hardcore devotees who can't for the life of them spot any Bush mistakes are the folks Lincoln talked about when he said you can fool some of the people all of the time. They actually believe those of us who want the United States out of Iraq now are undermining our troops. But if we leave now or in five years, the result in Iraq will be just the same. The primary difference would be in the length of the casualty list.
So yes, there are people undermining our troops. But those of us seeking to bring them home now are not among them.
Ivan Goldman, a former P-I editorial writer, lives in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., and is a columnist for The Ring magazine. His son is serving in Iraq.
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