Happy talk, sad reality

September 12, 2006

Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings

I’m not sure I can put it any better than Steve Soto:

Listen to all that happy talk from Bush and Cheney as the fifth anniversary arrives, about how things are getting better in Iraq, and how they wouldn’t do anything differently. Then why is the Marine chief intelligence officer in Iraq saying we have already lost the Anbar province (home to Fallujah and Ramadi, two cities we have tried to take and hold several times already)? If things are going so well and you say you would do nothing differently, why are the Shiites and the Kurds pushing ahead with partitioning plans, after seeing that the central government is impotent and unable to secure either the Sunni center or the Shiite south? And if you wouldn’t do anything differently, why would the Shiites and Kurds do this even if the move costs Iraq its central government and constitution? The fact is that partitioning Iraq, with all its plusses and minuses, is a serious possibility no matter what plan Cheney has for the country.

And while Bush gives speeches today, the big question on this fifth anniversary is why is Al Qaeda’s Number Two still giving speeches about attacks to come, when any president committed to fighting a war on terror would have made sure that both Number Two and Osama Bin Laden would be dead by now instead of given them free passes at Tora Bora and northern Pakistan? Why is the Vice President sounding like a good German when he says that anyone who dissents from the administration is emboldening terrorists, after saying that 2005 will be seen as the turning point because the faltering Iraqi government came to power, a government that has no presence in the al Anbar province? Is that the only defense you have left Mr. Cheney, to do a Mussolini impersonation to quell critics of your own failures with smears challenging their patriotism? Tell the members of the 172nd Stryker Brigade, who have had three tours in five years and have now been extended again to save Baghdad why al-Zawahiri is still alive, and why you encouraged the Pakistanis to harbor Bin Laden nearly five years after Tora Bora when the trail has gone “stone cold“.

Consider this an open discussion post. What do you all think? What are your thoughts looking back over the past five years?

My thought is that if Boy George II had asked for sacrifice rather than shopping, we might be in a better place today.

  • Michael seems to be overreaching in trying to stitch a few facts and some hearsay into proof that the War has been lost. This doesn’t seem like clear thinking to me.
    Joe

  • The war in Iraq was Vietnam revisited from the moment Dear Leader thought it up which was, incidentally, before 9/11 and the war on terra’. A fatally flawed idea, fighting for something unnecessary in someplace unconquerable, was futher doomed by arrogance and incompetence. Bush got the perfect storm quagmire (to use every cliche for disaster, which was easily foreseen) and we and the Iraqis are reaping the ashes.

  • If we spent $3BB per month on finding Bin Laden and other terrorists and nont on blowing up patriotic soldiers in IRaq we just might have made terrorist a less appealing job. If we were blowing up training camps and launching raids on banks (looking across the pond here as an example) we would be much much safer.

    Bush has taken the biggest surplus in history and turned it ino a deficit. He has taken the strongest democracy in history and shreadded our constitutional process. He has taken the worlds only superpower and stretched the millitary so thin we can’t commit one more soldier anywhere.

    My thoughts are what a total failure!

  • It’s never been anything but happy talk; and even after all that’s happened, all the tragedy and the death: 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina, Lebanon, the increase in terror attacks around the world, the turning of world opinion against us – happy talk is all they offer now. They don’t seem to understand that there should be a connection between what they say and what they do; and between what they say and what the rest of us see.

    They are extraordinary in their arrogance, incompetence, corruption, and brutality.

  • What if winning the war for civilization distracts us from saving the earth from civilization? At this stage, war is a terrible opportunity cost.

  • I think that after five years of complete failure by our press, political leaders and corporate-controlled marketplace to take any responsibility whatsoever for the horrible activities of our government, we (the people) will be stuck with an economic and environmental disaster that will literally destroy what we now take for granted in the way of food, clothing, shelter and medicine. If a solid majority of people had bothered to pay attention when there was still time to make a difference, which was way more than five years ago, perhaps we would have had a chance to survive. Unfortuantely, over the last five years, we’ve actually been convinced that ignorance is strength and freedom is slavery, so just going through the moves (until the nuke goes down, or the next hurricane or next terrorist attack or jesus shows up) is the only sensible thing to do.

    It seems that most people would really rather die (and condemn their children to death) than admit that there’s something they could do to change things. I’m kind of depressed. Does anybody think we can get out of what’s coming?

  • It’s fear mongering and happy talk. A delicate balance to keep the American sheep in line, scared to death of the terrorism bogeyman and at the same time ever grateful for daddy Bush protecting us from grave harm through his valiant fight against our enemies.

    And the Democrats have been checkmated, just as they have been before on the war on crime and the war on drugs, into trying harder to be even tougher on these issue, like Avis against Hertz.

    And so we all lose, until the little boy comes along and makes fools of 300 million Americans by putting the terrorism monster in its proper place, by pointing out that it’s mostly costume, with very little substance inside.

    A threat to civilization itself? My God what fools they must think we are to swallow such hyperbole.

  • Bush does not want OBL caught — how can he scare us if he’s not around?

    When I am in one of those parnoid tinfoil hat moods, I figure OBL is dead (from natural causes) and GWB is creating those tapes and videos to keep us scared 🙂

  • I had a lengthy post ready to post yesterday, one that went off on the Bush administration in ways that shocked even me — I’m pretty harsh on the guy, but this one was brutal.

    But then, as I was going to put it up on my site, there was one thing I could not – and still cannot – fully process: Just how far we’ve fallen in the past five years.

    Instead, here’s the conclusion I came to at 2 a.m.:

    It’s strange to think that out of America’s greatest tragedy, we were presented with perhaps America’s greatest opportunity to change the world for the better. And it’s sickening to think that America’s leaders have managed to squander that opportunity.

    I’m not sure if it’s just criminal incompetence, part of the PNAC game plan, random chance, or something else all together.

    Whatever it is, it’s heartbreaking that, in five short years, the politics of fear seem to be the only thing rising out of the ashes of the World Trade Center.

  • Although I have always aligned myself with democrats (because I believe they represent your AVERAGE American, not some silver-spoon rich kid that the GOP represents), I remember thinking to myself in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 that maybe it is a good thing that Bu$h was appointed president; after all, aren’t republicans supposed to be stronger on defense? I also remember thinking that in the run up to the Iraq invasion, about Feb. ’03, that at least the architects of the first Gulf war were in charge (of course I believed what they were telling us), and that they were so successful in ’91 that this war would be as they said it would be.

    What a difference 5 years make.

    All I can say now is that America has been the victim of a silent coup, orchestrated by the likes of Bu$h, Cheney, and other plutocratic elements in our society. They have used Americans’ faith to divide us on ideological lines; they have used class warfare to undermine initiatives that would bring people out of poverty into the fold of affluence and upward mobility; they have commandeered our military into what amounts to a ‘republican guard’; they have abdicated their responsibility for the preservation of our nation’s resources, fiscally and environmentally; and last but CERTAINLY not least, they have violated every principle this nation stands for. I honestly believe these people had a hand in 9-11. It is no coincidence to me that the PNAC states very clearly that a Pearl Harbor type of attack is necessary to gain the support of Americans so that they may implement their very anti-American agenda. It is no coincidence to me that big oil sets our national energy policy, and that Iraq and Iran play very prominently in these plans. It is no coincidence to me that on the actual day of the attacks, Cheney was in a position to make our air defenses stand down. I mean, think about it people: America has the most sophisticated early defense warning systems ever known to man, and we couldn’t dispatch a fighter jet to take out 2 airliners that were way off course, with no communications with air traffic control for over an hour? These people represent the new world order; a global plutocracy comprised of corporations who have no allegiance to man, country, or God; only to the accumulation of wealth and power. Face it America, our country was a victim of a silent coup in 2000, and this cabal used 9-11 to launch the endless global war on terror, designed only to keep the masses in check via fear of attack. This is not the country I grew up in, and not the world I want my children to grow up in. Something must be done to stop this. Anything. We have been granted authority to do so by our founding fathers.

    The American middle class; the millions of people like you and me who want to make the world a better and safer place for us and future generations, is the only entity strong enough to stop this. Europe can’t do it, Asia and Russia won’t, Africa is for all intents and purposes null and void in terms of influence, so that leaves it to us, the normal majority, the middle class of America.

  • Is it just me—or does anyone else why Cheney is always hunched over and growling like a cheap Quasimote wanna-be? The man’s clearly spent too much time in the bell-towers to be even a remotely-effective member of a national administration.

    And, if that adminstration is so dead-set serious about winning the whole jackpot in Iraq, they’d be honest with both the nation, and themselves—and break out the “D” word.

    But, they won’t do that. They fear that daring to even whisper the word “draft” a mere eight weeks out from the midterms would, without a shred of doubt, demolish their party’s Congressional majority—in both houses.

    So they hope that the Democrats will have to make that dreadfully-fatal choice. Let the Dems enact a draft—if even to stabilize the situation long enough for an orderly withdrawal, as compared to a rout—and the GOP will be back in full force come November 2008.

    Or, will they?

    It would be terribly unpopular, but I think a Democratic government—as opposed to the current “Reich-ism” we’ve got—could sell a draft on the premise that it’s the only way to fix the gargantuan mess that the GOP has left the American People with. If we are to be a nation at war, then we need the ability to fight through to the finish…and not play Lincoln’s MacClellan—as the Bush adminstration has so eloquently done—by “advancing-in-reverse….”

  • The Bush administration’s hostility towards energy independence, environmental protection, civil rights, fiscal responsibility, and science continue to be costly. But his foreign policy disasters trump all.

    9/11 should have been taken for what it was — an act of terrorism by a cult of fanatics whose primary goal is turning the Middle East into a fundamentalist religious society. There weren’t enough al queda operatives conveniently massed together to bomb. A different approach was required.

    The initial reaction to 9/11 was shock and fear. How could WE be attacked with such lethal success? And by a group of towel heads! After the shock abated in a few days, we got mad (naturally) and wanted blood. Afghanistan briefly slaked the thirst, but the administration, knowing a good thing when it saw it, began to take cynical advantage of America’s fears and hatreds. On to Iraq and the systematic isolation and alienation we chose as a foreign policy.

    The thing that sticks in my mind is, during the lead-up to the invasion, the widespread mantra of “they — the government — know things we don’t and that they can’t tell us and that we shouldn’t ask about. They’re keeping us safe.” It was a faith-based invasion.

    It was also an opportunity to wave the flag, sing along with Lee Greenwood, enrich the magnet industry, and orgasmically revel in our deadly and magical weapons that only kill and maim the “bad guys.”

    The spread of freedom and democracy was a loftily cover story and forced rationale for the enjoyment of righteously slaughtering people different than us. People who were un-American.

    What the hell, anyway? It didn’t even touch most of us, and we DID go shopping in the name of patriotism. We were spared the ugly reality of seeing coffins, and particularly the thousands of seriously wounded troops we supported with our stick-on magnet ribbons.

    Smug in the comfort of trusting the administration to take care of terror, we had the opportunity to get some licks on fellow citizens we never liked anyway — liberals, gays, foreigners. We didn’t go as far as the French Maquis who, for the most part, was devoted to killing political enemies rather than Germans. But we flogged ’em with the flag.

    We’ve had a five-year evolution from peaceful, unified and respected democracy to profound division and serious abridgement of our Constitutional rights. The extent of the damage to our rights hasn’t been seen since Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus. But Lincoln had the wisdom of Lincoln, and the American Civil War was both the greatest threat to our union and undesired by both sides.

    Iraq was a war of choice and But Bush is Bush. Had the invasion been cancelled at the last minute, right-wing radio would have groused for a week, and we’d have moved on to the next celebrity scandal. Saddam would have remained in power, but the U. S. president’s responsibility is to the American people, not to Iraqis. And war, as keep saying, just isn’t something a sane goverment starts. Period.

    I hate to say it, but that’s the way I see the last five years. The damage knowingly perpetrated by the Bush administration has been horrific. The most serious result, I think, is the national division cultivated primarily by Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. That will be the hardest wound to treat and heal.

  • It’s strange to think that out of America’s greatest tragedy, we were presented with perhaps America’s greatest opportunity to change the world for the better. And it’s sickening to think that America’s leaders have managed to squander that opportunity.

    They’ve more than squandered it. They weren’t content to simply ‘do no harm.’ They’ve made the world worse for everybody.

  • Get ready for the two-month Fearmongering give-it-all-you’ve-got Halloween Spectacular brought to you by Karl Rove.

    It has started with the logical pretzel:”We are safer but not yet safe” … and will culminate with “all Democrats are terrorists”.

  • “. . . you encouraged the Pakistanis to harbor Bin Laden ” may be somewhat misleading. If the facts are true, maybe our leader can explain the more than $1 billion payment of our taxpayer dollars to facilitate truce agreements with the Taliban and Bin Ladin by Pakistan.

  • http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060912/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_iran

    TEHRAN, Iran –

    Iraq’s prime minister made his first official visit to Iran on Tuesday, asking Tehran to prevent al-Qaida militants from slipping across the border to carry out attacks, an Iraqi official said. Iran’s president promised to help Iraq establish security.
    ……..
    “We consider Iraq’s progress, independence and territorial integrity as our own,” Ahmadinejad said.
    Ahmadinejad also said Iran hoped the United States will leave Iraq soon.
    “This trip will strengthen bilateral relations. Iran and Iraq, as two brotherly neighbors, will stand by each other and unwanted guests (U.S.-led coalition forces) will leave the region,” he said.
    Al-Maliki described the talks as “very constructive” and called Iran “a very important country, a good friend and brother.”

    Is this part of the “plan” for victory? Part of the happy talk, or the fear mongering?

  • The day after 9-11 the whole world was with us; we had friends everywhere. We have lost so much. We all have to grieve over the loss of our treasury, the destruction of our environment, and our own sense of personal freedom. We may even, as some have suggested, have lost our democratic form of government. But it is the loss of the trust and respect of the world community that seems to me to be the most serious. We have made so many enemies in the last five years that it is a real possibility that we may be killed by our own arrogance or the arrogance of our leaders. There are so many people world wide that hate America and that it is frightning.

    I agree with the premise that in 2000 we were taken over by a silent coup, but I can’t accept the idea that the Bush/ Cheney regime orchestrated 9-11. I do not think they are capable of that type of conspiracy, not because of their ethics, but rather because of their competence. Knowing what I know now, I don’t think they could pull it off.

    I don’t know what it would take to get our reputation for decency back in the world, but an offer of restitution to the people of Iraq might be a good place to start. I’m not holding my breath.

  • bonnie @18

    You know, this actually gives me hope. Unless this is all part of some plot to assasinate the Ass of Iran, I’m fairly certain Bush etc are not happy with this latest development.

    Al-Maliki described the talks as “very constructive” and called Iran “a very important country, a good friend and brother.”

    Hmmm. And how do you feel about Bush calling your “brother” evil Mr. Prime Minister?

    I wonder if Bush will try to explain why Iraq is making nice with Iran or just ignore it. I wonder if he will acknowledge the fact that Iraq wouldn’t be kissing up to Iran for oil if its own supply hadn’t been disrupted.

    I wonder if he will acknowledge the fact that if anyone, any government, no matter how vile were to offer Iraq aid, they might take it because things are very bad there and there’s still the issue of the bill for the invasion. I wonder if he will acknowledge the fact that the Iraqis shouldn’t have to pay for the complete hash the US made of their country? He’s said there were no WMDs. He’s said there was no Al Quaida/Saddam connection. All he’s left with is the fact that Iraq was a “risk.” I wonder if he will ever ever acknowledge that in terms of “risk,” North Korea is a far greater problem. But you know what? I’m falling into the trap of assuming that anyone in this Admin is thinking about anything at all. Forgive me.

    Here’s something to ponder (from an article on the Anbar report):

    “[Rear Adm. William D. Sullivan, vice director for strategic plans and policy on the Joint Chiefs of Staff] said the intent in developing Iraq’s military was to create a force “that would have a modicum of its own self-defense capability without being an army that could threaten its neighbors.”

    Modicum – A small quantity.

    How much of a modicum are we talking buddy? How does one create an army that can defend itself against guerilla tactics but at the same time can not threaten its neighbors? From what I understand guerilla warfare is the hardest form of fighting, especially in an urban environment. (Rememebr when Admin. poo-pooed worries that Iraq would turn into a street fight?) So, in order for invasion forces to come home without leaving behind utter chaos, the US wants, needs an Iraqi army that can cope with the worst fighting conditions, but at the same time these soldiers can’t have the ability to bother anyone else. It’s like saying we want Marines that aren’t that tough. Or perhaps they’ll only be allowed to drive around on Segways.

    The more they talk, the dumber they look. And they just keep talking.

  • I’m going to repeat my Sunday Discussion Group comment, since it’s apropos:

    On 9/12 the country was united as it had never been before, except possibly V-E Day. Republicans and Democrats embraced and offered George Bush their combined loyalty (90% polls) and resolve to overcome the disaster. The “hole in the ground” would be quickly filled with a suitable monumental building or buildings. The whole world, through its newspapers, claimed to be American on that day.

    From the get-go Bush bungled and mangled all those magnificent opportunities to turn disaster into something we could have been proud of. San Francisco immediately rebuilt after the 1906 disaster, inspired by nothing more than their faith in the future. Not so this Admiinistration. Right away this spoiled scion of a rotten family said that no sacrifices would be asked of us — has anything worthwhile ever happened without sacrifice? Right away this selfish bastard saw what the “Plan for a New American Century” had called years earlier a sort of modern Pearl Harbor — the opportunity to invade a country which was doing us no harm and thereby settle an Oedipal conflict with his wimp-factor father. Right away that slime-bag Karl Rove began planning his political campaigns based on further hate and nothing to hope for but fear itself. And right away the Administration began relentlessly calling for massive tax cuts on behalf of their obscenely rich friends.

    Yes, the country has changed. Politics has become religion, with all its divisive sectarianism and attendant hatreds of the impure and impious, the heretical and non-religious. The uniter has divided us more emotionally than at any time since the Civil War. The decider has rejected all Democratic suggestions for improving things, excluding them even from reading bills passed in the middle of the night, supposedly in our name. The defender of our Constitution has violated it on 750 occasions.

    Yes, the country has changed. Hopefully this November it will begin to change back, to move forward. Then, either through impeachment or simply keeping the Shrub and his cronies inactive at the cattle-less “ranch” in Crawford and whatever hole Cheney infests, we’ll at least be rid of the whole worthless wriggling pile of slime. Rid of, that is, until the historians get their knives out and begin the deliciously juicy task our journalists have so far failed to do.

  • It is a pity that so many people who need to hear the truth would rather listen to the rantings of Rush or Coulter than bother to read some of the well thought out postings and comments at sites like this. This administration is so vile that one doesnt have to be a Schlesinger or Galbraith to easily and convincingly shred its veneer of credibility.

  • We are in the fight of our lives for civilization, to save us from dark aspects of our own culture. Cancer is the inability of an organisim to regulate and control its own workings due to a breakdown of self governance.

    Stop the metastasis, remove the Republican cancer in 06.
    Iraq is but a symptom of America’s critical dis-ease.

  • With the election this close, to say that they screwed the pooch royally at this point would not, as Rummy would say, be helpful. At this point, you don’t go with the lies you wish you had; you go with the lies you already have made and hope for the best by keeping the country scared of the boogy man.

  • “If things are going so well and you say you would do nothing differently, why are the Shiites and the Kurds pushing ahead with partitioning plans,”

    If propaganda isn’t happy talk, what is?

    SINCE THE POLICY IS DISMANTLEMENT, they are having a very successful project.

    “There IS NO MORE IRAQ. There will be THREE TERRITORIES.” — Kissinger, briefing his Saudi clients ON THE REAL POLICY, in early 2004.

    As for the “election being close,” this coming election was stolen back in 1999 when they installed their fake electronic voting scheme. It works GREAT.

    The CROOKED SecStates of OH, CA, FL, MD, and many other states, and their cronies now installed in YOUR county, and in counties around the country, won’t have to work too hard. Sure, they will have to lie, cheat, and break the law, but the COMPLICIT corporate media won’t buck the Cloak of Silence, that they maintain through a constant meaningless babble. And there are plenty of complicit judges.

    State election laws are being replaced with a direct Congressional swearing in of NON-DEMOCRATICALLY SELECTED candidates! That just happened in CALIFORNIA and NEVADA — though this has not been covered in any of the major blogs TMK.

    Life in wartime, I’m not panicking, but the major and minor blogs ought to get the heads up before the MOWER comes along and strands your heads in the sand.

  • Politics has become religion, with all its divisive sectarianism and attendant hatreds of the impure and impious, the heretical and non-religious.

    I just had to note how incredible that line is — in fact, I’ll be bookmarking that comment and quoting it in the future.

  • Can anyone in this comments section back up even one thing he or she has stated with a fact. One fact could change a mind, but I havn’t seen any here.
    Is reason considered un-progressive?
    Joe

    • Comments are closed.