Why This War Cannot be a Failure: Dropping the F-word on the Endless War in Iraq 
by Greg Moses
www.dissidentvoice.org
December 25, 2006



 

Failure is an f-word obscenity that we need to stop using when it comes to the USA-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. How can something be a failure when it has no purpose to begin with? In fact, the Iraq war is endless, because it seeks a purpose still.

Incredible is the claim that the USA made some “mistake” about “weapons of mass destruction.” That so-called purpose for going to war was a deliberate lie, cooked up and spoon fed from the kitchens of Washington, DC.

Astonishing is the claim that the USA sought to restore sovereignty to the Iraqi people, because immediately upon arrival the USA-led administration not only toppled a dictator, but also abolished the rights of the Iraqi people to sovereign ownership of their land.

Atrocious is the justification that connects the invasion of Iraq to a war on terrorism, because this is only a way of admitting that the war on terrorism is a race war.

So if not for self defense or Iraqi sovereignty, what is the purpose of the war? To re-make the Middle East? This seems to be the most honest answer to date. But if this is the purpose that the USA occupation is trying to win, then how dare we speak about victory or defeat, success or failure? How dare we?

Morally, one cannot pose the problem of “remaking the Middle East” and then ask if the USA is “winning” such a thing through war.

If the so-called purpose of the occupation is to remake a region, then the question is, who are the war criminals responsible for launching this occupation and how do we bring them to justice?

At some deep level, where language is too conflicted to say, the American people have come to understand the wrong we’re doing in Iraq, and no f-words will help us figure things out.

Wrong is not an f-word. A wrong war cannot be made right by winning.

Greg Moses is editor of Peacefile and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net.

Other Articles by Greg Moses

* Globalized Gulag: Palestinian Refugees and Children Held at Hutto Jail
* Habeas Corpus Matters
* Confronting the Violence of Dollar Hegemony
* New Psycho-Management Reported at Maquiladoras
* CNAC's Elite Agenda for the Border: Security, Temp Workers, and Oil
* A Little Fascism Still Goes a Long Way
* Walkout in Red, White, and Green: What America is Supposed to Feel Like
* Federation of American Scientists Warns of Shift Toward Nuclear Preemption
* Thanksgiving Delayed: Texas High Court Blesses Excellence and Inequality
* Nonviolence on Veterans Day?
* Falling Back Another Hour in the State of Hate: Texans Ban Gay Marriage
* A Movement Gathers Power on the Sorrow Plateau
* Mona in the Field of Crosses at Camp Casey, TX
* How Building a Saudi City Made a Lefty Out of Dick Underhill, VFP
* Dining with the Posse (of Peace)
* Bush Teaches Intelligent Design in Prison
* A Gold Standard for Texas Education
* Dylan's America
* Pushing Back the Violence: Peacemaker Teams Get in the Way
* A Too Convenient Crisis? Neo-Con Logic at the Border
* Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises Birth of a Nation
* Why I'm Not Standing with Gringo Vigilantes
* Legalizing Law Enforcement in the South Texas Drug Wars
* Growling at Halliburton from the Belly of the Beast
* Taking Jesus from the Hijackers
* Why are the Rich Districts Helping the State Rush to Appeal the School Funding Case?
* King and the Christian Left
* Every Hero a Killer? Not
* Getting Real About the Draft
* Boot Up America! Helmly Memo Leaks Bush’s New Deal
* Forty Faxes & A Whisper: Texas Election Scandal
* Ask Not Who Bankrolled Falluja
* The One-Two Punch of Racism: Whitewashing the Voter Fraud Issue
 

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