I’ve been nearly bursting at the seams these last few days as the nation has been treated to the rebirth of the art of pantomime –just turn off the sound when watching the ambassador and the general offer their insight on the morass that is the war in Iraq.
There are so many levels of irony involved in our current political situation in Iraq and the rest of the world that one hardly knows where to begin. Point a finger in any direction and either irony or anomaly will more than likely be indicated.
For starters, one cannot possibly overlook the outrageous irony that our political, social, and economic fortunes rest in the hands of an incompetent, underachiever born into the very power structure, which he has helped to destroy and is now failing him by revealing to the world his shallow character and elusive integrity. Thousands upon thousands have died since the folly to invade Iraq was perpetrated by the dark brotherhood of this administration; however, anonymous minions do not bear exclusive culpability for the hubris we now endure; George W Bush embraced the advice of his subordinates and willingly encouraged them in the discovery of fact that supported his his own desires and beliefs –what possible rationality could prevail in such a barren and foreboding environment? Objectivity may be limited in any enterprise but it should always be sought with honesty and earnestness.
Of course we are all beyond the glaring inconsistency that most of those in the administration who were so willing to sacrifice the blood of Iraqis and our own citizens to their own myopic cause neither served nor offered to stand in any public way for the vitriolic patriotism which they espouse now having become the principal demagogues in a political party rocked by greed, corruption, and personal disgrace. That is old news. Should we really feel comforted by the fact that we can’t conclusively prove that W didn’t do his time honorably in the guard and that he can’t prove that he did? That is not the kind of proof I’d base a vote of confidence on, especially since that man is the president of the US and commander-in-chief of all armed forces in this country. How can the military be satisfied with such a glaring field of gray. Oh, that’s right, it follows the chain of command and hoists up honor as its coverlet and petard against any unfriendly environment.
So the line is that we must continue to squander billions of dollars –I’m not about to try to translate such figures into equivalences such as health care, foreign aid to impoverished nations, medical research, economic renewal at home and abroad, the development of viable environmental strategies which include not only alternative sources of energy but policies, which govern those resources– because of the complete failure of George Bush and his administration sends the piper knocking at our door to pay for W’s maladroit Texas two-step. I refuse to accept the weak argument that our prosecution of the war in Iraq was the principle obstacle to success. We should never have gone to war in the first place –not one drop of blood that has been spilled is fair exchange for what we now have procured; and, the tragedy is, of course, that mere drops have not been our unit of measure! We have become inured to this administration’s tactic of deflecting responsibility for the consequences of its own actions, to the status quo, to its dark vision of the future which, extends only as far as the next administration and consists of a plan of governance of stonewalling designed to maintain our current status in Iraq.
General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker have been making the usual political circuit as apologists for the president’s position on Iraq. Both men are quickly lauded by politicians the moment their names are mentioned. Both men are united in their support of each other and both maintain a glimmer of hope for a successful outcome for the United States to the war in Iraq. Turn off the sound, watch them in silence, observe their faces, their body language, the pair’s pantomime reveals a different story.
Ironically, nearly every utterance of Petraeus’ name is prefaced with the tired euphemism, “he wrote the book on counter terrorism�?, as if this opus of military wisdom is a popular reference found on book shelves in houses all across America. Where was the general when the Cowboy deputized Tommy Franks to lead his sparse posse into Iraq or when General Shinseki was unceremoniously dropped as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for his unpopular estimate of troop strength that suggested that several hundred thousand soldiers would be necessary for a successful invasion of Iraq? While Shinseki’s accuracy has been acknowledged recently by other generals, their hindsight is an impotent salve for the wounded and will not resurrect the thousands who have been killed. Sadly, Petraeus’ own ambition can not be dismissed as it plays into the president’s refusal to accept the political realities in Iraq and the rest of the world. It may be premature, but, despite his PhD in international affairs, Petraeus has not demonstrated the broader vision that characterized Marshall’s contribution to Truman’s reconstruction of Europe after WWII; however, it is certainly possible that a thorough analysis of both presidents, Bush and Truman, may well invalidate any comparisons of Marshall and Petraeus.
Withdrawal from Iraq will have consequences, none, I submit, will be more grave than the president’s choice to invade Iraq in the first place. George W Bush had choices, real choices, and had he chosen a more viable course of action he would have had the support of allies who instead were forced to oppose his self-indulgent efforts. What remains for America is more than just the historian’s assessment of this president’s legacy; only the prophetic can pierce the dim veil of the future and see in it a kind accounting of this ill-prepared and foolish man who allowed his pride to mete its hubris on so many innocent people. While most of us go about our lives, struggling to make ends meet, to find a job, to pay for our children’s health care and/or education, Bush will return to life before the high office of president, guarded, secure, with some college or university finally consenting to house his presidential library. He will return to a family of oil men with a history of power and influence. The dead in Iraq will earn a voice in the aftermath. The wounded soldier who volunteered either out of patriotic zeal or for more practical reasons will never elude the pain in his phantom limbs; he will search for the resources to replace his worn out prosthesis, which may only last until the mid-term of the next administration. The dead will remain so and while the honor we accord them may assuage our own guilt, it will not revivify them, it can never make them whole. Where will the funds be found to care for the mounting tattered army of wounded; how long will it go unnoticed before another Walter Reed scandal pricks the political and national conscience to honor all such commitments? When will patriotism be redefined to exclude a dysfunctional, misanthropic zeal which twists the meaning of loyalty and betrays the most salient features of citizenship in a democratic republic? George W Bush has depleted his political capital –his account is in arrears; he has steered the ship of state toward a course of bankruptcy and sacrificed democracy for a myopic vision as distorted as his articulation of it. It will require being born more than once to atone for all that he has helped to come to pass. Even Deciders are capable of mistakes, but what sets them apart is their incapacity to acknowledge those mistakes.
Turn off the sound tonight. Only this time, in place of W, let’s imagine we are watching Marcel Marceau as Humpty Dumpty: we may, at least, hope to be touched by the redemptive nature of art, which is far more preferable than the president’s impoverished casuistry of piecing together that which he willfully chose to break. Finally, all of us must shoulder a portion of the onerous weight of responsibility for the state of our nation; whether by the widest or narrowest of margins of votes, whether by hanging chads or campaign indiscretions, whether by exercising the penultimate power of citizenship or its most ignominious forfeiture, the fact remains: we elected him, twice. Pascal said: Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. I’m wagering that Pascal’s aphorism was accurate, especially about the thinking part, and that in the most turbulent winds, even in the winds of war, we may bend but never break.
