A Dubious Anniversary
It’s now five years to the day since President Bush unilaterally declared an end to the Crusade War On Terror Fight Against Global Extremism Glorious Struggle Against Islamofascism War in Iraq, which was meant to find Osama Bin Laden democratize the Middle East bring peace, prosperity, and democracy to Iraq wait a minute. What in the hell are we doing there again? The names, faces, and rationales have shifted as if in a sandstorm, or have become lost in the fog of war; each promise, and each benchmark, has been broken, rationalized, and ultimately replaced, with the administration fervently hoping each time that nobody remembers the rationales of days gone by.
What have we gained? Osama Bin Laden still lurks somewhere in the no-man’s-land that is the Afghanistan-Pakistan border; Iraq, which has been a sort of Yugoslavia on the Tigris and Euphrates, threatens to disintegrate without the glue provided by American political pressure and American blood; terrorist groups that did not exist prior to our entry into Iraq now thrive like weeds. We have sown the wind, and are only now–slowly, belatedly–beginning to realize that we will reap the whirlwind.
Our losses run the gamut from the uncomfortable (the rising price of oil and gas) to the sobering (America’s loss of prestige in the world community) to the downright tragic (more than 4,000 dead service men and women, the majority of them lost after the declared cessation of hostilities). The only gain to which the government can point, with all that we’ve lost, is that we’ve deposed a despot.
We have brought not a functioning democracy to what has become the Balkans of the Middle East, but a parody of self-government. We have traded a single strong man who oppressed his people for an endless parade of warlords, pretend Madhis, and sham clerics who’ve merely added a sectarian or ideological gloss to their predecessor’s insanity. We have turned terrorism into an industry unto itself, where it’s common to talk of terrorist “franchises,” as though they were McDonalds (and may yet become as widespread). We have driven the price of oil through the roof. And, worst of all, we have squandered, and will continue to squander, the lives of thousands of American, and tens of thousands more Iraqi, citizens for a succession of chimeras dreamt up in the mind of the C student who runs our country.
Enough, already.
For the last word on this, I’ll turn to Hugo Ball, the Dadaist poet, painter and mystic, who wrote from the Cabaret Voltaire in 1915, as Europe tore itself to pieces:
Every word that is spoken and sung here says at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.
Nor, Mr. President, have you.
Postscript: Think Progress posted a series of statistics a year ago today breaking down the pre-Mission Accomplished cost of the war–in both human and financial terms–in comparison with its cost after Bush’s declaration. It’s only gotten worse in the time since.
Tags: "war on terror", George W. Bush, Iraq, Mission Accomplished, Politics