Bush to America: War! 
by Jack Random
www.dissidentvoice.org
January 11, 2007



 

Faced with a collapse of popular and political support, the president’s response in an address to the nation was astonishing: Not only will the war effort go on unabated; it will be escalated and expanded.

The first question that arises is: Why was it necessary to dawn the mask of deliberations, dancing silently through two months of weighty consultations, for this?

This did not represent a change in strategy. It did not represent a change in thinking. Rather, it was open defiance: Damn the election; load the munitions! It was a barely discernible rephrasing of the same old tired lines:

“We must not fail” but we have failed.

The war is “noble and necessary” when in fact it was a war of choice founded on repeated lies and deceptions.

We are engaged in “the ideological struggle of our time” when in fact we have prosecuted the oldest imperial strategy in history: a war for greed and dominion.

We are “advancing liberty” by ripping a nation apart at the seams.

“We have to fight them over there so we will not have to fight them here” when in fact we have created more enemies by our actions than we can possibly count.

On and on, the president stands firm, lock-jawed and determined. He will not back down.  He is a war president: Once a war president, always a war president.

He will send another 21,500 American warriors into door-to-door, urban battle in the midst of an exploding civil war.

He will push Iraqis to take up arms against Iraqis and position our forces in the crossfire.

He has dispatched a carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf with vague orders to engage Iran on the high seas.

Like the commander who cuts off the head of an emissary and returns it in a box, he has discarded even the hint of real diplomacy and hurled another volley of threats to Iraq’s neighboring nations.

Having replaced every commander and advisor who dared, however belatedly, to speak truth to diminishing power, the president has barricaded himself in a tower of stone.  He cannot hear our protests. From his high perch, he can barely distinguish us as human beings.

What is the truth he cannot bear? Spurred on by a radical fringe of power hungry, oil greedy, unconditional Israeli loyalists, he defied the history of the world by attempting to become the first western power to successfully conquer, occupy and establish permanent dominion in the heart of the Middle East.

The most dangerous mythology to have evolved over four years of a catastrophic war is the one that holds: We could have prevailed if only we had committed sufficient troops from the beginning. History instructs otherwise. We could only have prolonged the catastrophe in a rising tide of Iraqi and American blood. To believe that the indigenous powers of the region or indeed the world would stand idly by while we seized the planet’s most illusive treasure is naïve in the extreme.

The second most dangerous myth to have evolved from this river of shame is the one espoused by Democratic spokesperson Dick Durbin (Senator, Ill.): That we have given the Iraqis enough. What have we delivered to the Iraqi people if not a broken nation, a legacy of death and a future as dark as a torture chamber in the basement of Guantanamo Bay?

No one wants an end to the war more than I do but not at a cost of blaming the victims. The Iraqi people did not invite us to invade and destroy their country. That invitation was culled from a corrupt circle of power hungry exiles -- bloodsucking leeches of the neocon dream.

We cannot be absolved from responsibility for committing the cardinal crime of international law (aggressive war) either by prolonging the suffering or by proclaiming our nobility as if by birthright. To promulgate either deception would be to announce to the world that we have learned nothing from our egregious crimes and that we are fully capable of repeating the offense.

The fallacies of the president’s plan for success are too clear for any honest analyst to ignore. Throwing our soldiers into the crossfire, imbedding them with alien forces, engaging the Mahdi army, baiting Iran and threatening Syria can only result in an exponential increase of violence, resistance and civil divide.

The idea that we failed by placing “too many restrictions” on our soldiers will come as a shock to the citizens of Fallujah, Ramadi, Haditha and the detainees of Abu Ghraib.

The president’s war plan is a stunning prescription for horrors beyond anything we have yet witnessed or contemplated.

The only elements of his proposal that even remotely make sense are those for political reparations (inclusion, oil sharing) and taking the fight to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Unfortunately, it is a little late in the game for reparations that should have been accomplished years ago. The Sunni insurgents would have welcomed them then but now they will greet them with scorn.

As for Al Qaeda in Iraq, it owes its existence to the American occupation and it will inevitably owe its demise to America’s withdrawal.

In short, the only role American presence can serve in Iraq today is the same role it has served for the past four years: destruction and death.

The most notable omission in the president’s address is more telling than what was included.  There was not a single disclaimer of our intent to maintain permanent military bases.

The debate is over. The war president will escalate and expand the conflict until his term of office expires or Congress stops him. By now we should all understand that Congress has the constitutional power to impose conditions of withdrawal on the funding of the war.  It is precisely this circumstance that the founders envisioned.

It will require only a modicum of courage to expose what could be the last lie of the despicable warlords responsible for this nightmare: Stopping the war will by no means compromise the safety of our troops in the field.

Stop the posturing. To surge or not to surge is not the real question. The lives of the Iraqis, of our soldiers and the moral founding of the nation is. 

End the war -- now!

Other Articles by Jack Random

* A Dance of Death: The Hanging of Saddam Hussein
* Ahmadinejad, Bush and Kofi Annan
* The Propaganda War: Revisiting Afghanistan on 9-11
* J’ Accuse!: Israeli Crimes Against Humanity
* Liberation Ramble South of the Border
* Haditha, Zarqawi & the Politics of Distraction
* Misconceptions in the Immigration Debate: What Would Crazy Horse Do?
* Requiem for American Democracy
* Paradigm Shift: Embracing the Power of Green
* Remember the Bastille: A Response to Mickey Z
* Designated Fall Guy: Replacing Rummy
* Libertad Y Justicia Para Todo!: Liberty and Justice For All
* Barry Bonds and the Steroids Saga
* Defiling the Grave of an American Hero: The Censoring of Rachel Corrie
* Starving the Beast: Programmed Ineptitude
* Constitutional Suspension: An Abdication of Democracy
* Right and Responsibility Depictions of the Prophet Mohammed
* Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan: Challenging the Pro-War Democrats
* The State of the Union: A Stumbling Illusion of Strength
* The Presidential Power Grab
* Surrealistic Pillow: The West Virginia Mining Disaster
* Pataki & Bloomberg: How to Bust a Union
* The Imperial President and the NSA Spying Scandal
* France and the Burning Embers of Repression
* The Activist Court & the Neoconservative Agenda
* The Agnew Factor: Clearing the Impeachment Path
* Iraq and New Orleans: The ABCs of Police Lawlessness
* The Age of Catastrophe: Preparing for Disaster
* No Tears for Rehnquist: The Legacy of a Chief Justice
* Zero Tolerance: Bush Gets Tough as New Orleans Suffers
* Hugo Chavez and the American Slug: Pat Robertson’s Call for Assassination
* The Lie of a Strong Economy (Beneath the Towers of Avarice)
* Fooled Again: Major Party Turnabout
* The New War Candidate: Major Paul Hackett for Congress
* Free Judy! The Fine Art of Calling a Bluff
* Executive Blackmail: The Betrayal of Democracy in Haiti
* Blame the Democrats & Move On: The Federalist Court
* Against the Wind: The Inevitable End of the Iraqi Occupation
* London and Madrid: Reflections on the War on Terror
* Judith Miller: The Anti-Hero
* Schizo Scherzo: The Last Waltz
* The Last Throes: The Light at the End of the Tunnel
* Impeach Bush -- US Out Now!
* Recall the Governator
* The Gates of Hell: Occupied Iraq
* May Day: The Rise & Fall of the Middle Class
* The Papal Aristocracy: Confessions of a Nonbeliever
* No Citizen Left Behind
* A Marine Comes Home: The Untold Story of War
* The Compassionate Leader -- In a Time of Crisis
* In Defense of Barry Bonds
* Defending Dan? Rather Not
* David Went to Canada...& Johnny Got His Gun
 

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