Could you ever imagine a dog saying, "hmmm... I don't like the way that smells."
One of the more difficult tasks ahead for America is to get out of the war with Iraq, it will be difficult because it wasn’t easy to get into the war in the first place, reasons for the war had to be created in order to justify it. The enemy had to be created, Saddam Hussein it now turns out was more of an illusionist and more a danger to his own people than to the outside world; but still the American presidency, against the unwilling will of congress, was able to turn him into: Hitler II. He had weapons of mass destruction, he used illegal chemicals, he was working on a dirty bomb, he tortured and gassed people, he didn’t allow for freedom of speech, this latter being particularly offensive to the American people, and so on, till there was naught else to do but do the right thing, take him out.
There was however an uncomfortable problem, first the Americans had supported Saddam’s regime in its early years and so he sort of had some insight into how Americans think, I read somewhere that he feared the ethnic and religious factions within Iraq more than he feared the Americans. But also there was the fact that while America was boycotting Iraq the French and the Russians had generated some substantial rivers of moneyed interests building infrastructures, adding a generator or a power plant and selling them weapons thus creating a symbiotically beneficial relationship, and of course this gave the French and the Russians an interest in fascist stability in Iraq.
Fortunately America has always been very good at marketing even if the product is missing some fundamentals, a war could always be lobbied and sold through a fear mongering marketing campaign that would shame even New York’s top ten marketing agencies. Satellites produced detailed photos of mobile labs that were brewing chemical malice, intelligence read that there were mobile missiles that could possibly reach Israel, and the Continent of Africa had provided Uranium while from somewhere else they had centrifuges. But more critical, Russian scientists that had not fared well since the fall of the Soviet Union, were selling dirty bomb schematics to Saddam. And then one day with the honorable Secretary of State, Mr. Powell, a trusted spokes person, the war was sold but not so well that everyone wanted to join the invading army. And so America did what any child does when it doesn’t get its way, it went at it alone. Besides that would work out better, for as everyone knows the United Nations is controlled by the third world and NATO and the European Union fight wars through a bureaucratic committee process that is paralyzing and America, the can do kid, is better off without those anchors.
And so we went to war.
But as with all things here this one was to be based on everything that had been learnt in the Civil War, WW I & II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, plus with added insight from the first battle with Iraq as done by Bush Senior, that liberated Kuwait’s oil fields from the invading tribal cousins. America also had the valuable advantage of video games and artificial reality, at any given moment Americans, very much like Roman gladiators trained in their on backyards, but at any given moment there are millions of Americans training for war through video games that realistically engage their participants in real world war scenarios, where fighter jets and tanks and soldiers are constantly being strategically engaged, all while in suburbia, to destroy the known foe. But also there are the surrealistic games which also create hyper scenarios of super beings that are able to travel through grave danger to acquire immortal powers, magical potions, double tipped whips and jewel studded daggers, and a plethora of specialize weapons that could scurry battalions of anythings anywhere; and so in general America has always been at the ready not only to go at it alone, but also to be imaginative and ready in the battle front by administering the un-conscripted maximum amount of training to civilians, the national guard and active soldiers even when they are off duty, through realistic sims.
And behind all this, almost as if sent by god was Rumsfeld the Secretary of War, he was a peculiar character in this historic times in that he understood the fog of war could be lifted through the internet of war, if you could know where every soldier was through magic dust, and know if he or she was still beating a heart, and if this soldier could feed real time battle information back to headquarters, then our army would have a greater advantage over that of the enemy’s, specially if our army were smaller, lighter and could be moved on a moments notice, and so we were ready to fight the war of the future today, with the centurion Rumsfeld at the helm.
Sold then by the nice Secretary of State that was himself a former soldier-general but overall a man of peace, who believed that war should be a weapon of last resort but if used should then be one of absolute maximum killing force, we had no choice then, having all means at our disposal, having to rescue the world from terrorists, and from Islamist fanatics, and from dictatorships, our leader, President George W. Bush told us that there would now be a campaign to spread democratic values and free market values to free the peoples of the middle east, and there was naught to do but that or forsake our turn at history.
Tony Blair, a Prime Minister with socialist leanings was whiling to go to it too, because in part he understood one thing above all others, America would win that war. I mean I don’t know how bookies do odds, but I think anyone could see that regardless of how powerful and mighty Saddam was, he could not bankroll a 300 billion dollar war, in the end his psycho babble would collapse because it didn’t have adequate financing, and so I think Tony Blair being the labor minister, crunched some numbers and saw that the math projected inadequate financing in Mesopotamia, and he figured that after the destruction along the Tigres river there would be plenty of construction contracts and he, if he stood by Bush, would be rewarded with the spoils of war and the Unions would see this as an astute labor campaign, after all British truck drivers and British mercenaries are making easy six figure salaries in Iraq. Power to labor.
Towing his good friend behind him to give legitimacy to the cause, Mr. Bush had now no choice but to go to war, he had to prove his mettle, and this he did, Mr. Saddam was recently sentenced for Crimes Against Humanity, and he will hang for it, undoubtedly this is a step in the right direction, the inquisitors made right when they used to do the same, however this is not meant to fix everything, Saddam being choked to death is only part of the way to democracy in Iraq.
Now part of this newly installed government in Iraq, is working day and night, with the American military command, to introduce a professional army, a disciplined police force, and there are any number of American and British companies rebuilding the entire country, its going to look pretty when they are done, however there is just one thing, the ethnic violence, 150 thousand dead in an undeclared civil war. These tribes will just not get along, they are trying to kill one another, brother against brother, mano a mano and the bloodshed is staining the introduction of democracy, freedom and the right to drive a car and cover your face with makeup, and to show your booty.
And where do we find ourselves? Back to square one, we cannot liberate these peoples from themselves, they just don’t want to be free, they love the fray, tragedy is married to them, they don’t want to work together for the common good and no matter how much our good will wants to triumph there, to allow them to be Mormons if they want to be Mormons, to allow them to speak freely against their government if they want to, to allow them the privilege of voting plus a Western style education, to give them the benefits that knowledge and the more important that "reason" has brought us, we can give them all these things but they just don’t want them, they don’t want to practice constitutional rights, hence why things are not working out.
We will probably have to pull out of Iraq, but after spending 300 billion dollars, 3000 American casualties no one, least of all Tony Blair, will be able to say that we didn’t try, that we didn’t give it our best, those peoples over there, they just want to do things their own way, shame to see all the suffering that cost them.
But where does that leave us, a good portion of us didn’t want the war in Iraq, but we support the troops, and we support our president, no one can say anything bad about our mother or our sense of patriotism. Now we are in a perplexing situation, if we say we are against the war does that mean we are being critical of the office of the president and unsupportive of our troops? Of course it does, it is no longer Bush’s war it is now The Nation’s War! Bush might have gotten us there but it is now our war, all of us are now in it, frustrated and perplexed but it is now our war, and it doesn’t matter one bit that Rumsfeld, a leading proponent of testing his theories on defense in real war scenarios, is out and now there is a, use the cross walk please, Mr. Gates. It doesn’t matter the country is now engaged in a war of international proportions and because we went at it alone and didn’t share the reconstruction contracts the French and the Russians are just going to sit by idly amusing themselves. “We told you so.”
And of course we have to support our troops as much as we have to support the defense department and the defense industry jobs. Or we could do the brave thing, and admit that our country was wrong, that we made a mistake, that we have to pull out and that we have added to the instability of the middle east, we could do that, but we are not going to do that, because that kind of valor is suicidal, we will have to tow the line, and the democrats, now in control of senate and congress are not going to stop it, they are not going to because they cannot and suffer not from the will power to do it, in the same manner that they didn’t suffer the brilliant thoughts required to prevent the war in the first place.
The new approach is simpler than admitting defeat, it is to allow the peoples of Iraq to fail them selves, we will keep sending money and troops till they prove beyond all doubt that they cannot be helped because they are not whiling to participate in their own rescue operation. There is already ample evidence of this as they don’t want to end sectarian violence, the national police has been infiltrated by the infidels and they are carrying out poorly disguised massacres. They will fail because they are just not us, they are not like us, they don’t care about freedom and voting and separation of church and state, they don’t, if anyone has given them the chance it is us, Europe was not willing to rescue them from themselves, China has kept mostly quiet, the only ones that dared to care for them was us, and now we have to watch all our efforts come to naught.
A few years from now we will leave Iraq, the bookies surely knew we would win the war, no one said anything about winning hearts and minds, bookies, ever wise, wouldn’t have given odds on that.
Ricardo ©
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