Op Truth's David Chasteen responds to Bush's speech:

Exactly.

I'd been wondering how Operation Yellow Elephant went in Virginia this past weekend at the national college republican get together. I've still not heard how many were signed up by recruiters (I trust it was in the thousands!), but I did here about Max Blumenthal's account in the Nation through a comment on Op Truth's blog:

Generation Chickenhawk


Yep, soldiers are exceptional, they are "different" than pundits, who are also exceptional. More than mere men! Young Justin Palmer can't bother with actually fighting in the war because he's too busy distributing yellow ribbon magnets made in China. Someone's got to do it! He's way too committed to Bush and his war to bother fighting in it.

And then there's this kid, Cory Bray, "a towering senior from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business":


That's right, Cory, you weren't going to pass that opportunity up and you shouldn't have. You're too good for the military. You're a gogetter! You were offered an opportunity of a lifetime and you took it! If you hadn't you'd be nothing but a chump, and since you're in line to be one of the sterling members of the Masters of the Universe, you've got to be prepared for waging battle in the board room. The dirty, ugly streets of Iraq would have only got you down.

Onward, our armchair soldiers! We're so much safer from terrorism now that you're fighting the good fight for us. God bless you and thank you for your service!!

John Kerry was on Larry King (with Bob Costas) last night after Bush's rah rah/no rah rah rally at Ft. Bragg and talked about Bush's evolving excuse for war in Iraq. First it was Weapons of Mass Destruction, then "spreading democracy," and now, finally, it is to fight the "terrorists" in Iraq so we don't have to fight them in New York.

Ugh. Of course Bush and his supporters dismissed the Downing Street memos by saying the past was the past and we're in Iraq now so we need to have "resolve" and not "back down" to the "terrorists". CNN rightly pointed out two disturbing things about Bush's speech: his reference to the insurgents as "terrorists," when clearly not all of them are al Qaeda members, and his implication through repetition that Iraq was responsible for the tragedy on 9/11. (Oddly, Bush quoted Osama bin Laden to make his case. The administration may tell us that Amnesty International is illegitimate, that Newsweek is a worthless source, but they promote Osama as an accurate, believable source. Hmmm...)

We know why the Downing Street memos are important: you've got to know how you got here if you have any hope of getting out, and just as Bush insists Saddam Hussein should be held responsible for his misdeeds as a tyrannical dictator, in our democracy Bush should be held responsible for his misdeeds too, which include lying to the American people and manipulating intelligence so he and his friends could have their endless war. But what about Bush's new argument that "we fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand"? What's the problem with that?

Beyond the fact that there were no al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq before we invaded (an argument neocons dismiss because they say we "brought the fight to us" in Iraq and they think that's a positive thing), there is this major flaw: it implies that there are a finite number of terrorists in the world, and once we kill them all in Iraq, then there will be freedom and democracy everywhere.

Of course, there isn't a finite number of terrorists, and as Richard Clarke and other terrorism experts have repeatedly pointed out, every day in Iraq we're breeding more terrorists worldwide, working basically as Osama's main recruiting officers. While Bush's policies aren't working to increase recruitment here at home, it's doing wonders for al Qaeda, who only have to slap up a picture of Bush or a dead Iraqi child to have the recruits streaming in, with no need to offer signing bonuses. If there isn't a finite number of terrorists, and I assume that even Bush isn't advocating that we kill every muslim, then where does his justification for the war leave us?

It leaves us with a war that will never end.

Rumsfeld has already cautioned that it in his optimistic assessment the insurgency may last twelve years (odd that he chose twelve, not ten, not nine, but twelve -- two more presidential terms after this one...). In his calculation, and if the number of American deaths stays steady, then another 11,000 American troops will die before we rid Iraq of it's terrorists. Just think of the number of Iraqis that implies lost -- we don't count them, since to our government they aren't important, but even the conservative estimate is over 25,000 so far, over 10,000 a year. It's heartbreaking to do that calculus.

How does this endless war benefit the administration? Watch Frontline's Private Warriors to get a glimpse, or just glance through the reports of how much money we've spent ($200 bil and counting) to execute this war through privatization. And there was the little thing of Bush's reelection, made possible through his continued insistence that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. More disturbing, though, is how waging endless war fits into the fascist model of control and manipulation. Whether you call it ChrisCap (Christian Capitalism) or Christian Fascism as Chris Hedges has, it's no secret that the administration is trying to transform our democracy into something less open to public debate and more in the fascist model of complete government control over all aspects of our lives (including how we live -- who we can sleep with, who decides on our health care and choices -- and how we die).

Under a fascist system, endless war is what keeps the government in control and in power. Just ask Big Brother how well this works. He switched his enemy so frequently, redefining who the enemy was and what the goals were (and what the army was "defending"), that eventually it was just the "enemy" and the "war" flickering in the background to provide fear and the daily "hate." It didn't matter who or what or where Oceana was fighting, only that it was waging war somewhere against "them." Bush's propaganda about why we're fighting Iraq is no different, really. The enemy shifts, the reasons for going to war shift. Even the place shifts, with his 9/11 references meant to bring us back to New York while simultaneously linking it to Iraq. (There is no mention of Afghanistan, for now. If it is politically expedient, surely he will start talking about it again to bring our focus to that enemy. I suspect this will happen in the next couple of months in the run up to the Afghan elections scheduled for October, especially if things keep deteriorating in Iraq. Things aren't going well there, either, but it's not Iraq. That helicopter that crashed yesterday in my husband's area was shot down by Taliban supposedly.)

Both the administration and al Qaeda, then, are benefiting from our war without end in Iraq. One benefits politically and financially, and the other benefits, well, politically and financially. Leaving the former baathists and other non-terrorist insurgents out of this right now, what are the motivations of either side to resolve this conflict? I think Bush is feeling the heat because of the rising death toll, but is it enough to counter his 9/11 "trump card," as David Gergen calls it? Will that be good enough to "give him time" to keep on with the war?

Like nearly every other American, I hope we are able to find ourselves a way out of this quagmire with the least amount of deaths on both sides and as soon as possible. I suppose this is where most reasonable Americans agree. But I worry -- if so many are benefiting from the chaos, will they be motivated to end it?

After the speech, republicans like John Warner insisted that the insurgents are losing because they haven't achieved any of their "goals" like disrupting the elections and destroying the Iraqi police force. But this analysis is based on the assumption, faulty in my opinion, that all of the insurgents have tangible, political goals. I don't think they all do. There are many insurgencies in Iraq right now, not just one. The former Baathists/Sunnis clearly have the goal of restoring their former power. But the insurgents driven by religious fanaticism, I fear, do not have a power-hungry, political goal. Creating chaos may be a goal in itself for them. What if it is about creating and maintaining instability and nothing more?

I assume that the news reports are accurate and all of the insurgents, regardless of their motivation, want us to leave Iraq. But what else do they want? What would bin Laden do if suddenly we left Iraq and there was no more fighting, if everyone lived in peace? Do you think he would stop fighting? I don't think so. His ideology is based on the perennial righteous warrior fighting for God. This is not a fight that has an end. There will always be something. This is different than Basque separatists or Irish orangemen or even Hamas members who all have distinct political goals. What are al Qaeda's goals, really? World domination? Would they really want that when they can stay in power endlessly with wars like this one that supply them with new recruits every day?

I hope I'm wrong. I hope they do have specific goals that can be negotiated through diplomacy or war to end all the killing. I remember after 9/11 bin Laden saying that al Qaeda's goals were to get the US out of the middle east and to get Israel to give back all of its land to the Palestinians. Obviously we can't force the Israelis to give up their country (and why on earth would we?), but we can take ourselves out of the middle east. Say we start with Iraq. If the right is right, and the insurgents/ terrorists/ whatever Bush is calling them now have actual goals, primarily the goal to get us out (remember, that's what they want. Bush said so. He warned us that we have to have "resolve" and "stay the course", otherwise the terrorists will "win"), then if we withdraw we might both "win." The bad guys get what they want -- an end to American occupation of Iraq -- and we get what we want -- an end to the violence that is plaguing the country and safety for all of our troops. We'd give them no reason to fight and no method to recruit. We'd have defeated them through nonviolence. Right?

It's pretty clear that we really are in a quagmire, regardless of how many pundits on both sides insist we aren't. "Quagmire: a difficult or precarious situation; a predicament." Yes, it is a predicament. How on earth do we resolve this mess? What's the solution? Or is there none? And how many more lives will be lost while we search our way, blindly, out of it?

We are living a tragedy, a true tragedy. And like those tragically flawed Shakespearean protagonists whose tragedies could have been prevented, ours could have been prevented too, if only we had stopped him.