Hey, Cajun!
I read the entire article, but I have trouble wrapping my head around the assertion (did I use that right?) that we went into Iraq to make a stand against Islamic terrorism. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the story the Bush Administration sold to us was A) Saddam was connected to 9/11, then B) Saddam was connected to Al Qaida then C) Saddam had WMD then D) we needed to bring democracy to Iraq. In that order, with B, C, and D following each other as A and then B and C turned out not to be true. At least, that's how I remember it (and I haven't forgiven Colin Powell for going along with the WMD thing. Though I appreciate the letter he wrote to McCain protesting the US's use of torture). The real reason? I'm cynical enough to think it's E) read below. This is an excerpt from a review of a new book by Frank Rich, "The Greatest Story Ever Sold." Then read after, because I do think the article you pasted in has one very valid point--
<<Of course, Rich is hardly the first to anatomize the decline of America's news culture. Far more compelling -- and originally argued -- is his insight into the real reason Bush went to war in Iraq. His answer to this endlessly debated question, and his related excursus on the personality of Bush himself, may be the single most lucid and convincing one I've ever read. Although it is almost painfully obvious, and wins the Occam's Razor test of being the simplest, it is put forward considerably less often than more ideological theories -- whether about controlling oil, supporting Israel, establishing American hegemony, or one-upping his father.
Perhaps this is because Americans, in their innocence, cannot accept that any president would deliberately launch a major war simply to win the midterm elections. Yet Rich makes a powerful argument that that is the case.
Playing the key role, not surprisingly, is Karl Rove. "To track down Rove's role, it's necessary to flash back to January 2002," Rich writes. The Afghanistan war had been a success. "In a triumphalist speech to the Republican National Committee, Rove for the first time openly advanced the idea that the war on terror was the path to victory for that November's midterm elections." Rove decided Bush needed to be a "war president." The problem, however, was that Afghanistan was fading from American minds, Osama bin Laden had escaped, and the secret, unglamorous -- and actually effective -- approach America was taking to fighting terror wasn't a political winner. "How do you run as a vainglorious 'war president' if the war looks as if it's winding down and the number one evildoer has escaped?"
The answer: Wag the dog. Attack Iraq.
Now ideology comes in, along with the peculiar alliance of neocons and Cold War hawks that had been waiting for their chance. "Enter Scooter Libby, stage right." As Rich explains, Libby, Cheney and Wolfowitz had wanted to attack Iraq for a long time, not to stop terrorism but for the familiar neocon reasons of remaking the Middle East and the familiar Cold War hawk reasons of trumpeting America's might. "Here, ready and waiting on the shelf in-house, were the grounds for a grand new battle that would be showy, not secret, in its success -- just the political Viagra that Rove needed for an election year."
Of course, there was one little problem. What reason could team Bush come up with for attacking Iraq? "[A]bstract and highly debatable theories on how to assert superpower machismo and alter the political balance in the Middle East would never fly with American voters as a trigger for war or convince them that such a war was relevant to the fight against the enemy of 9/11 ... For Rove and Bush to get what they wanted most, slam-dunk midterm election victories, and for Libby and Cheney to get what they wanted most, a war in Iraq for ideological reasons predating 9/11, their real whys for going to war had to be replaced by more saleable fictional ones. We'd go to war instead because there was a direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda and because Saddam was on the verge of attacking America with nuclear weapons."
Of course, once the war in Iraq turned into a disaster and no WMD were found, the Bush administration had to do everything in its power to prevent the American people from learning that these reasons were lies. This is why Bush and his henchmen went after Joe Wilson.
This quick 'n' easy war was perfectly designed to appeal to George W. Bush. Rich draws a quick but brilliant sketch of Bush as a lazy, entitled boor, lacking in any real ideology beyond crony-capitalist Republicanism, who above all wanted to win and was accustomed to winning -- because he had always played with a rigged deck.
Rove, "Bush's brain," dreamed of establishing a near-permanent Republican majority in Washington à la William McKinley. This was fine with Bush. "This partisan dream, not nation-building, was consistent with the president's own history and ambitions in Washington. Bush was a competitor who liked to win the game, even if he was unclear about what to do with his victory beyond catering to the economic interests of his real base, the traditional Republican business constituency ... Iraq was just the vehicle to ride to victory in the midterms, particularly if it could be folded into the proven brand of 9/11. A cakewalk in Iraq was the easy way, the lazy way, the arrogant way, the telegenic way, the Top Gun way to hold on to power. It was of a piece with every other shortcut in Bush's career, and it was a hand-me-down from Dad drenched in oil to boot."
It is now widely accepted that the Iraq war is one of the greatest foreign policy blunders, if not the greatest, in U.S. history. Some have gone further: The respected Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld argues that it is "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them." Not a few regard Iraq as spelling the beginning of the end of American dominance in the world. >>
-- I think religious extremism is every bit as dangerous as the man who wrote that letter you posted says, and maybe more so. And yes, we have to fight it. But to think that we can make a stand and fight and defeat terrorists like we could a nation is a ridiculous statement. They don't fight for a nation; they fight for a cause. We can establish a lovely democracy in Iraq, and they'll still blow up stuff. They're fighting for God; they aren't going to have any interest in whether the country they live in has surrendered or not. Hell, we have (kind of) a lovely democracy here in the US, and we have religious extremists committing acts of terror all the time. The Murrah building, doctors murdered. Last week a guy crashed his gasoline-laden car into a women's health clinic in an attempt to blow it up. That's A) stupid, because the place didn't even perform abortions and B) freakin' scary, because when you come down to it, the only thing the Islamic terrorists have that separates them from the Christian terrorists is the suicide thing. Also when you come down to it, other than Jesus vs Mohammed, the Islamic extremists and the Christian extremists are not that far apart in what they want-- their interpretation of their religion being the source of law in their countries, women in a subservient position, and deviating from a puritanical morality being punishable, even by death (You did know gays are often executed in some Islamic countries? Kind of like Matthew Sheppard, but with the government's blessing)
And unfortunately, our nation is currently in the hands of a government that is very sympathetic to Christian extremists. And it charged into one of the more secular nations in the Middle East, opened it to Islamic extremists taking power and now claims it was all about sowing freedom. Freedom to what? Cozy up to Iran? Thanks; I feel a lot safer now. Not.
And I don't know what the answer is, either. I do know I think it is essential for those of us who love and believe in freedom to stand up to extremism, in whatever form it has. But "making a stand" in Iraq, or however the man put it, did not and will not make a dent in the "war on terror." I don't see how it can. Terrorism isn't a nation; it's a tactic. How do we fight a tactic?
BTW-- I am not in any way suggesting that the average Christian is an extremist (that would make me as dumb as that guy who drove his car into the women's health clinic). Anymore than the average Muslim is. I'm saying extremism leads to violence. So, how do we fight the extremism? What do you all think?
My first thought is, stop letting religions tell anyone that sex is bad. I think if half the young violent Muslim men were getting laid, they would stop being violent because their focus would be on how to get laid some more, not on whether the US is being immoral. It's funny, but I do believe it. China is very concerned about the shortage of women, thanks to selective abortions of female fetuses over the past decades. There is great concern that young men, with no prospects to find a wife, will band up and turn violent.
So there's my suggestion-- get young men laid. Anyone else have any ideas? Ones more likely to be taken seriously?
