George Bush’s Iraq policy continues to be backed by those bizarre souls who wanted to change the name of the greasy fast-food item that’s making US kids obese to “Freedom Fries” because the French had vision enough to see a moral travesty in the making.
The French, in fact, clearly saw no substantive difference between Iraq getting invaded by America in 2003, and Hitler’s unprovoked rape of their own country in 1940.
They also understood the US would disastrously lose its woefully misbegotten aggression. The memory of Dien Bien Phu and the Battle of Algiers gives citizens of France stark insight into colonial (and neocolonial) folly.
History will record that the most pathetic figures of the current era were those propagandized, “proud” Americans who never mustered one iota of critical thought — who placed yellow ribbons on their SUVs and bought jingoistic Toby Keith CDs — and couldn’t see that by helping US neocons try to steal oil from beneath Iraqi sand, they were unwittingly stabbing their nation right in its heart.
Thanks to their blind support for madness that should have been nipped in the bud, Osama bin Laden’s fondest dream is coming true.
He wants to break the American military, bankrupt the USA, pour its sons and daughters into a perpetual meat grinder, eviscerate our nation’s global standing, and give Islamic terrorists abundant basis for telling the Muslim masses: “See, the infidels will settle for nothing less than conquest. Join us in jihad to preserve our culture and faith.”
How ironic that an axiom from Christianity, “Pride goeth before the fall” (to which conservatives are completely oblivious in connection with Iraq), is an extreme segment of another religion’s chief weapon against us.
A careful weighing of immediate versus long-term interests, active diplomacy, the initiation of a fair and just foreign policy, and some measure of contrition for our past and present sins, would totally upset al Qaeda’s plan.
But all that is beyond our president and his fatally obtuse backers.
Not content with finding themselves ear-deep in one Middle East quagmire, they want to rush headlong into another (despite the original bog’s voraciously sucking reality making that desire crazily impractical, if not altogether impossible).
Yes, the Bush Gang is actually planning to attack Iran.
It’s reminiscent of a losing boxer in a long, tiring fight desperately lunging forth with hoped-for haymakers. He just leaves himself open to opposing blows that will drop him to the canvas.
Those who support the existing conflict and look favorably upon attacking Iran fail to make a pivotal distinction upon which everything hinges.
They don’t understand that the US isn’t waging war in Iraq, but on Iraq, and that precisely the same would apply to Iran. That makes all the difference in the world, and it will determine the outcome of both conflicts.
Propaganda absurdities to the contrary, we aren’t fighting al Qaeda in Iraq, but a broad insurgency comprised overwhelmingly of the Iraqi people themselves. Al Qaeda is just an opportunistic hanger-on, like a remora riding a shark. It’s that main rebellion, passionately devoted to freeing its violated homeland from foreign aggressors, that possesses iron will which wavering American public staying power can’t even remotely begin to match.
Just as we didn’t truly go to war against Saddam, but on Iraq itself, the same holds true for Iran.
If and when the US attack comes, it won’t be against demonized Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but on the whole Iranian nation, plus everything sacred and strong in its entire history.
George Bush will find himself not only battling determined, ordinary Iranians, but Cyrus the Great, Darius I, Xerxes, and the full panoply of powerful Persian tradition.
Only a colossal fool would invite a second contest that an already dazed, arm-weary boxer can’t possibly win.
But then, utter foolishness has been Shrub’s tarnished hallmark for a very long time.