What Rough Beast Slouches Towards Baghdad To Be Born?
I was against the war as far back as Fall of 2002, when it was clear that the Bush administration wanted it. I always thought it was a foolish exercise in hubris and greed. But my and millions of others protests were dismissed as "a focus group," and it went down anyway. And so here we are.
We've got to end the occupation. It's not working. It's not going to work. In fact, it's making the situation worse.
Ending the occupation doesn't mean trying to dodge any national responsibility. It doesn't mean isolationism. It doesn't mean "cut and run." It means making the only moral choice we've got left, and taking to first step towards bringing down the curtain on this misbegotten American Empire.
We have two options: we can end the occupation in a process we have some control over and attempt to foster a more effective (read: international) means for helping the New Iraq find a balance, or we can wait until we can simply no longer afford to maintain the empire, let the permanent bases we're building be overrun, lose many more lives, kill many more people, and have nothing to show for it but more blood in the sand, more debts and more enemies.
Go vote next week. It won't solve everything, but it will help.
Victory - for whom?
Thu, 2006-11-02 20:38 — Fr. James MayzikThere is a problem that not too many want to touch. As soon as this debacle became an "occupation" we were put in a pickle.
The majority of Iraqis consider the Americans to be occupiers. Therefore for them to win... we have to lose.
The Bush Administration keeps trying to foist some boogeyman as the enemy. First it was Saddam loyalists, then it was Sadr, then Zarqawi, then infiltrators who were making pilgrimages to Iraq in order to kick the Americans out. But no matter - Iraqis consider US the enemy.
Bush says we'll stand down when they stand up. Hogwash. For them to "stand up" they need to defeat us. When they asked us to leave and we didn't, their fight became a battle for independence.
Nobody wants to withdraw from an occupation because you can't do it without losing face.
And especially not an arrogant idiot like our President. Not even the the French in Algeria would leave without throwing away their self-respect, or consider this from King George III:
"I can never suppose this country [G.B.] so far lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant America independence; if that could ever be adopted I shall despair of this country [G.B.] being ever preserved from a state of inferiority and consequently falling into a very low class among the European States."
Letter, 7 March 1780, to his prime minister Lord North.
We have to start saying now, "Bush lost this war" so that when the Democratic President in 2008 has to withdraw, America blames Bush.
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