November 15, 2005
By Eric Mader
In a Veterans Day speech Monday, U.S. President George W. Bush attacked
those critical of the Iraq war as "deeply irresponsible."
Yeah, right.
This is the man who prepared for the invasion of Iraq by hatching a
completely new policy of war-making, the so-called "doctrine of pre-emptive
war." Never mind that policymakers
both sides of the Atlantic consider the new doctrine outrageous,
counterproductive and ultimately illegal.
Such things matter little to the Bush team. What, after all, do policy experts know?
This is the man who ignored the advice of his own counterterrorism
experts. They said invading Iraq
would be like giving a huge Christmas present to al Qaeda: it would prove
definitively to the Muslim world that we were mainly interested in their oil
and would attack them to get it.
But never mind the
counterterrorism experts. What do
they know compared to Rummy and (former Halliburton CEO) Dick Cheney?
"We are not there for
oil," says former ChevronTexaco Director Condoleeza Rice.
"We come to Iraq to
liberate the people from tyranny," says Son of Big Oil George W.
Bush.
And the Muslim world
believes them.
This is the man who let Rumsfeld and Cheney plan the whole war,
intentionally pushing the State Department out of the decision-making process
and thus ensuring the chaos of the post-Saddam period. Now we know that even Tony Blair's
people were desperately pressuring the Bush team to make more thorough plans for
the occupation, but to no avail.
But what are occupation plans when you have God and high tech weapons
on your side? Hell, why should we
even need Arabic speakers to help us manage Iraq's political transition? Just send over a few cronies and lots
of cash.
"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the
conduct of the war," the president said Monday, "it is deeply
irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began."
What in the hell does he mean by "rewrite"? The history of "how that war
began" has not yet been written, so how can it be
"rewritten." It's true
that when it finally is written it may well prove the Iraq war to be the most
inept and irresponsible foreign adventure ever undertaken by our government.
Is the president maybe afraid that this history is actually now starting
to be written and so he's trying to
make the nightmare of actual history go away by pretending it already has
been written?
Critics of his
administration are "irresponsible," he says? It's hard to fathom.
Is this the man whose legal counsel set the stage for Abu Ghraib and
all the other instances of U.S. torture (in several cases torture to death) of
detainees? By legal counsel here
I'm talking of Alberto Gonzales, who claimed early on in the Bush reign that
abiding by the Geneva Conventions when dealing with prisoners of war was
"quaint" in the current Age of Terrorism. Besides which, we are Americans: we don't need to abide by
any sort of civilized international law because We Are The International Law
Didn't You Know That?
If invading Iraq was a Christmas present to al Qaeda, America's torture
of detainees is a New Years and Birthday present all wrapped into one. I wonder whose birthday it was--bin
Laden's or al Zawahiri's? Or maybe
it was Zarqawi's birthday. In any
case the Muslim world knew well enough that by Red Cross estimates some eighty
percent of prisoners in Iraqi prisons had nothing to do with the
insurgency. And the Muslim world
knew that while those prisoners were there they were being bludgeoned and
frozen in freezers and stacked up naked on camera. Wouldn't it be a surprise if some of those men, once
released, went and joined the insurgency out of loathing for how they'd been
treated? Wouldn't it be a surprise? I mean can't they see that we are there
to liberate them?
Bush is a better al Qaeda recruiter than bin Laden ever was. With his super-effective policies, he's
become a regular Muslim Terrorist Factory.
"Where once there were no terrorists, we will make some,"
seems to be the administration motto.
And we his critics are irresponsible?
Is this the man who decided to try to foment democracy in the Arab world
by starting with Iraq?! The thought is laughable. I'm not only saying this in hindsight
either. No, most scholars of the
region, long before the war began, pointed out that Iraq was an
ethnic-religious powder-keg and that once Saddam fell the country would descend
into a maelstrom of Shia religious fundamentalism, Sunni paranoia of Shia
revenge, wise Kurd intransigence, and Iranian meddling.
And this is just what is happening.
But the experts and
scholars were ignored because the Bush Administration has no need of experts
and scholars when they set themselves to doing something--no, they are men of
action and will just go ahead and do it and due process be damned.
And you know what? Across
the whole dusty expanse of Iraq, from north to south and east to west, there
was not a single WMD canister to be found. Not a single little jar of anthrax or even a closet-sized
bio-weapons factory anywhere.
And we the critics are irresponsible?
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Irresponsible:
Colin Powell's top aide speaks on decision-making in the Bush
Admin.:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051021/wl_afp/usdiplomacypowell
Irresponsible
and Un-American:
U.S. Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in
Afghanistan and Iraq:
http://www.aclu.org/International/International.cfm?ID=19298&c=36
Irresponsible:
Bush and team bend the war on al Qaeda into a war on Iraq:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3556191.stm
Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
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