from Talking Points Memo…We are bigger than Iraq.
By that I do not mean we, as America, are bigger or better than Iraq as a country. I mean that that sum of our national existence is not bound up in what happens there. The country will go on. Whatever happens, we’ll recover from it. And whatever might happen, there are things that matter much more to this country’s future — like whether we have a functioning military any more, whether our economy is wrecked, whether this country tears itself apart over this catastrophe. But we’ll go on and look back at this and judge what happened.
Not so for the president. For him, this is it. He’s not bigger than this. His entire legacy as president is bound up in Iraq. Which is another way of saying that his legacy is pretty clearly an irrecoverable shambles. That is why, as the folly of the enterprise becomes more clear, he must continually puff it up into more and more melodramatic and world-historical dimensions. A century long ideological struggle and the like. For the president a one in a thousand shot at some better outcome is well worth it, no matter what the cost. Because at least that’s a one in a thousand shot at not ending his presidency with the crushing verdict history now has in store. It’s also worth just letting things keep on going as they are forever because, like Micawber, something better might turn up. Going double or nothing by expanding the war into Iran might be worth it too for the same reason. For him, how can it get worse?
And when you boil all this down what it comes down to is that the president now has very different interests than the country he purports to lead.
At least in Viet Nam, our motives weren’t suspect. We just made a mistake. We thought we were heroically fighting Communism, instead of intervening in a Civil War. In Iraq, we were unseating a blowhard we’d already beaten, and causing a Civil War – and our interests were tainted [oil].
I have a friend who is older than me who is a holocaust survivor who was born and lived in Vienna until she was put on the last train out. Her Dad died in a concentration camp. We were always able to talk about politics. She and her husband a WW2 Marine were lifelong Democrats. When Bush started talking about going to war with Iraq my friend said that we should because Saadam like Hitler was a terrible man and his people needed to be rescued. I knew then that she would never change her mind and that was one of the last times I spoke to her except when I see her infrequently in the supermarket. I haven’t been able to call her since. If my friend still believes that Bush did the right thing who am I to argue with her. She has a right to feel the way she does with her life experience but I had to stop seeing her for my own sanity. I think of the Veterans of Foreign Wars that sat listening to Bush talking about the Vietnam and Iraq wars the other night and I said to myself why aren’t they booing him ,instead they were applauding him and later some had to have pictures taken with him. Whenever I saw Cheney making a speech to Veterans groups I’d sit wondering why do they tolerate people like him who applied and received 5 deferments to stay out of the service and Bush for that matter in the National Guard and at least delinquite a year of his service. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be respectful to people who don’t go into the service just to people who push war who don’t serve. It’s all a mystery to me. How could we have let this war happen? By we I mean everybody. I think that a documentary should be shown that best represents what war is all about and make it mandatory to all adults who might be responsible for declaring war. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the people who pushed for war in Iraq never wore a military uniform.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the people who pushed for war in Iraq never wore a military uniform.
I agree. My Air Force years were at a posh base in Europe. As much as I opposed the Viet Nam War, I feel guilty I didn’t go there. I’m not sure I’d have gone if I’d been assigned there, though it would have been as a non-combatant physician. But I don’t know personally anyone from my time that doesn’t feel conflicted about that War. The guys that went felt guilty for going and/or disillusioned about how it came out. The guys like me who served elsewhere felt guilty for serving somewhere else, or being in the military at all, or for not going to Viet Nam. There was no right place to be.
But, I have no sympathy for the ones like Bush and Cheney who avoided dealing with it altogether. And I sure think that their now being champions of a war like this is a massive insult to all soldiers past and present. No one who hasn’t been to war should ever be in a position of starting or running a war. They don’t even know what it is…