Posted at 09:51 AM ET, 12/16/2011
What
to make of GOP debaters’ silence on Iraq war
The cruel war is over, and Iraq very soon will be on its own. It has cost the American people about 4,500 lives and about $1 trillion and faith in our institutions and the good will of many in the Arab world and the advantage we once had in Afghanistan — hard to be in two places at once — and so much more. But in the Republican debate last night, the war was hardly mentioned. On to Obamacare and Newt Gingrich’s weird scheme to crack both the courts and the Constitution in one blow by allowing Congress to subpoena judges to have them account for their decision. The man is a Rorschach: If you think he’s sane, then you are not.
But on to the war. It lasted nine years.
This is longer than World War II, and it cost us a bundle, and we are now, more
or less, broke. We certainly could use the $1 trillion that went into the war,
and we certainly could hold George W. Bush accountable for not raising taxes
and for squandering Bill Clinton’s surplus. The biggest crater created by the
war is at the Treasury Department. This is worth noting…
But little of this was
noted in Sioux City, Iowa. The Party of the War, the Republican Party, breezed
past the last nine years as if nothing much had happened. The candidates did
not rue their support of the war — as I do and did — and they did not say what
they had learned from their mistake, and they did not bewail the lies and
exaggeration or Dick Cheney and the jaw-dropping incompetence of President Bush
and the stunningly wrong statements of Condoleezza Rice.
Appropriately enough, the
debate was sponsored by Fox News and broadcast on that network. Fox was the
semi-official voice of the Party of War, the enforcer of political conformity
when anyone doubted the wisdom of the cause. Their correspondents naturally enough
did not question the candidates on the war nor, for that matter, the role their
own network had played in the debacle. This was Roger Ailes’s war, and in all
fairness he should take a bow.
Just one question would have sufficed: What did you learn from the
war, Newt? — or Mitt or Rick or Michele or Jon or Ron or Rick again? Is there a
lesson there for the rest of us? Does it make you cautious about promising war
with Iran and aligning yourself too closely with Israel’s right-wingers? Have you
learned something about the limits of air power or about upsetting the balance
of power? Have you visited the amputee ward of a VA hospital and seen the pain
— the constant, throbbing pain? Have you looked into the eyes of a wounded man
or woman and said, “Sorry, we’re moving on.”
This cruel was is over, and
now we have to debate whether Newt Gingrich was or was not a lobbyist.
Cassi Creek:
Like Cohen, I
must admit some early support of the Iraq war.
I allowed my concern for the continued security of Israel (mostly
because of the numerous Scud attacks launched at Israel by Hussein’s command
during the Gulf War) to override my distrust of Bush, Cheney, and the theocons
who stood to profit from a war. I
believed sufficiently in the mental instability of an Arab dictator to discount
the depth of greed and stupidity driving the demands for an invasion of
Iraq. I owe a fervent apology to the
families of our dead, to our wounded, and to the troops who spent multiple
tours of duty trying to build a nation out of Iraqi ruins while our nation
decayed due to the GOP’s utter lack of concern for anything but further enriching
the rich.
The Iraqi war
troops are now out of a war that kept them gainfully employed. They are coming home to search for jobs that
no longer remain, to families that are ill equipped to deal with combat
veterans and their peculiarities, and to a Veterans Affairs department that is
woefully underfunded to care for them and their injuries, apparent and/or
concealed. The funding is controlled by
a GOP that couldn’t wait to send them off to fight but which also could not be
bothered to fund the war and its aftermath.
As a veteran,
I find it inconceivable that any modern government would treat its troops so
poorly. But there is a decided lack of
concern for the troops, partly because, so very few of our elected representatives
and officials have actually worn the country’s uniform, and even fewer have been
under fire.
So many of
the GOP’s elected have neither family members in the military or any other
contact beyond shaking hands with the hastily cleaned up troops during a “fact-finding”
trip that is usually little but a re-election photo shoot.
So, young in
age, old in experience troops, your bit of this war, the Iraqi war, is
over. There’s every chance you’ll visit
fun, fascinating Afghanistan before it ends.
The economy, featuring outsourced jobs and no more social safety nets,
may make 30-year men and women out of you if the Pentagon’s funding isn’t cut.
However, as
Cohen notes, there is a madness among the GOP/teavangelist candidates that
combines greed, anti- Islam behavior, and an over-abundance of stupidity into
drumming up a new Crusade. Iran, sadly
all too likely to give them another attack as a rallying point like the attacks
of 11 Sept 2001 is likely to be our next theater of operations. It won’t be our best troops against Hussein’s
politically reliable. Iran’s armed
forces will be better trained, better equipped, and will be certain that Allah
is on their side.
Until the
next crusade, driven by the teavangelists and other groups eager to start a
world war over religion, succeed in pulling you back into the dirty end of
things, Welcome home, troops!
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