Guest Post by Morbo
You can always rely on the British press to lay it on the line. Unlike their too-often cowed counterparts in America who get so close to their sources they become administration mouthpieces, U.K. reporters rarely forget that a journalist’s first task is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Hence, you can pick up a newspaper like The Guardian and read a stunning column by Brian Whitaker explaining exactly how President George W. Bush misled his country to war and why that action has been a spectacular failure that has made the world less safe. Sadly, you also get to read about why that monumental screw-up will haunt our nation for many years to come.
The opposition media, such as it is in America, sometimes gets bogged down in minutia. We’re so busy parsing the latest pack of lies from Bush and his gang that we sometimes forget the big picture. Whitaker brings us that picture, and it’s not a pretty one.
He begins by noting that a military historian named Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, recently opined in the Jewish newspaper The Forward that Bush’s war in Iraq is the most foolhardy military action since the Roman Emperor Augustus lost two legions in Germany — in the year 9 B.C.
It’s not like van Creveld is some easily dismissed nutcase prone to wild hyperbole. As Whitaker notes, van Creveld is “one of the world’s foremost military historians. Several of his books have influenced modern military theory and he is the only non-American author on the US Army’s list of required reading for officers.”
Whitaker’s piece only gets better from there. He explains, in clear and concise language, exactly why Iraq is destined to descend into civil war and why terrorism worldwide will increase because of the U.S. invasion. He outlines why the only option left is a pullout and why it’s bound to leave America with a black eye.
The tragedy is, Bush has created a monster that will still roam about wrecking havoc long after he has retired to his ranch.
Whitaker is not hopeful for a resolution to the Iraq problem any time soon. Among his conclusions is this sobering thought:
“The inescapable fact is that the processes Mr Bush unleashed on March 20 2003 (and imagined he had ended with his ‘mission accomplished’ speech six weeks later) will take a decade or more to run their course and there is little that anyone, even the US, can do now to halt them.”
So, even if a Democrat takes the White House in 2008, he or she will spend a huge chunk of time trying to mop up the mess Bush made. Every moment the new president devotes to that issue will be one less dedicated to Social Security reform, fair taxation, health care, job creation, poverty and numerous other issues that cry out for our attention.
Sure, we’ll all cheer when Bush is gone. It will be kind of like having that bratty neighborhood kid who always trashes your house move away once and for all. You’ll breathe a sigh of relief, but only for a moment, as you survey your destroyed house and wearily roll up your sleeves knowing you have a long and difficult task ahead as you set to work to make things right.