Letters to the Editor
MereMortal
Published Letters: 151 Editor's Choice: 19
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this is no accident
[Read the article: How Cheney bombed in Afghanistan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have often observed to myself that the real dawning of the Bush era backed as it was by a gaggle of neocons (I mean after all he wasn't obliged to listen to them, his father didn't and Reagan dropped them after Iran/Contra) could be expressed as the Likud-isation of US politics.
With the neocons' absurd plans enacted one after another we see Isreali type tactics used to subdue populations that resist occupation. This is an utterly thankless task.
I have no proof of this (how could I have?) but it seems to me that the neoncons at they stated in their famous PNAC document, wanted to heavily increase weapons spending and make foreign policy much more interventionist [hard to do absent a new Pearl harbour]. Lo and behold they get a Pearl Harbour and enact all these plans fast. Straussian to a person they strongly believe that a nation needs an external enemy. It used to be Russia, but Russia is more compliant these days and also we've been there. So now we have a new amorphous enemy [yummy said the neocons] and we can have a new cold war, with all the military spending that that entails, and in any case this lot are far less dangerous because they don't have nukes on missiles. Zbigniew Brezinski famously said about the mujahideen menace:
"What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
I think they would have gotten away with it, because the corporate media hardly did any proper Iraq reporting between 2003 and 2005. They were obliged to when the war wounded (as opposed to the dead) reached tipping point. They didn't reckon on the power of the red states to turn against this policy when they concluded that far too many of their sons/neighbours/acquaintances children were coming back home with horrendous IED injuries [the most common] I heard it said (but I'm not 100% sure of these stats) that in WWII the injured to the dead ratio was 3 to 1, in vietnam 6 to 1 in Iraq it's 16 to 1. Of course this is entirely the tactic used by Iraqi insurgents and the Taliban: make the cost of war prohibitive politically to the US. I foresee a military retreat in both countries no matter what the leaders say about how dangerous that is. Apparently it's rare that wars started by one administration are ended by it. The cleaning up is always performed by the next lot, because they are not identified with it politically.
As someone else pointed out, it's very easy for a big nation to understimate the real dangers lurking in a small war.
So there is a contradiction, they expected to crush all these enemies in an imperial resource-grab and have the odd international terrorist incident show that there is a real enemy out there. Instead they are mired in two countries and although the cost to the US treasury has been astronomical, it hasn't resulted in the geopolitical advantage that they wanted. Because these reprobates god-darn, they are fighting back. Instead of admitting that this is a disaster, they say "the fight is tough, but we must go on" which can be translated as "There's no way I'm losing face over this". Cheney is an inveterate liar, nothing he says can be trusted and if he will be gone soon, but he will also be remembered as the worst veep of all time. Which is only fitting.
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The human capacity for self-deceit is clearly infinite
[Read the article: Libby and the White House book club]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Andrew roberts is the right wing creep historian who whilst on a LBC [London Broadcasting Corporatio] radio phone in show about operation Desert Fox (1998 when Clinton attacked Iraq) was asked "But every time we attack with these so called smart bombs loads of civilians die" inturrupted with "frankly I don't care if loads of Iraqui civilians die, no I don't care, we have to reign in Saddam"
I heard this first-hand, having never particularly liked him for his smarmy smugness, I found myself shocked to very core by that [and it takes a lot]. The broadcaster was really shocked too.
What a charmer, I think he and Bush [how many iraquis have died: answer=>30 thousand MORE OR LESS] are obviously well suited, this is quite apart from any reasonable view that Bush's delusional grandiosity by trying to outrank Churchill is surely a harbinger of troubled times ahead for all of us. It makes me want to weep.