Saturday, March 20, 2010

The 7 Year Itch


I had nothing to say yesterday. Bad liberal blogger, bad. No Cheetos!

And what was there to say on the 7th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq? In 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 I'd faithfully written posts on every March 19th trying to remind even a tiny fraction of the American people of something that ought to be actionable common knowledge: That we were lied into a war that would wind up costing us at least $740 billion dollars (and, according to Nobel Prize economic laureate Joseph Stiglitz, will eventually cost us $3 trillion).

But every year I wound up essentially saying the same thing over and over for the simple reason that nothing had changed. There was no accountability save for a detainee abuse trial and a sputtering contractor investigation here and there. Those responsible for lying us into Iraq then shrugging their shoulders five years later and claiming, "Who knew?" and blaming the CIA for their deceptions are no closer to going to the Hague than they were when Bush's approval rating was, inexplicably, at over 90% right after 9/11.

After seven years of bloated Pentagon budgets and bloated Iraq "reconstruction" budgets, the hawks have finally come home to roost. We're reeling from sticker shock and don't even know it even while our government is telling us that the $940 billion health care bill can't insure more than 32 million of our 48,000,000 uninsured fellow citizens.

So, really, what else could I have said yesterday?

Television is supposed to be the only media in which reruns are acceptable. We're not supposed to get reruns in our magazines and newspapers and even television journalism is not allowed to loop the news from previous years.


Yet that's precisely what we're getting fed day after day by media outlets owned by some of the largest defense contractors in the world. And while we were concentrating on comforting blue and purple fingers in the winter of 2005, we should have, instead, been examining with Lady Macbeth's tortured conscience our own bloody red fingers for being so complicit in the greatest war crime of the century if not of all time.

And what will we tell our children and grandchildren decades from now as they ask us from our knees, "What did you do to protest the war in Iraq?"

"Well, nothing. We didn't have a draft and, as a result, there wasn't enough at stake."

Indeed, even the most potent and passionate ideology will sputter out if not supplemented by having something personal at stake. And this generation, this epoch in American history will be indicted by posterity thusly:

That we were the complacent Wall-E generation that allowed ourselves to be lied into a guerilla war we were guaranteed to never win, the war generation without a viable antiwar movement in which Tea Partyers, anti abortionists, anti gay rights groups and anti immigration reformists had made more serious inroads with their own intellectually and factually barren platforms than anti war activists who had unimpeachable reasons to storm and occupy Washington in blood-curdling outrage.

It is all of a piece. Health care reform is gobbling up all the ink and air waves at a time in which this unreachable seven year itch known as Iraq has come and gone without much notice (the front page of yesterday's Boston Globe doesn't even reference Iraq). And, as William Rivers Pitt said on the 17th,
The best estimates, seven years later, put the cost of this war into the hundreds of billions of dollars, a sum that nobody in the media will tell you might have come in handy during this recession.

Let me restate this unimpeachably true and absolute position: We have spent well over $700 billion on an illegal war that has shredded our economy, crippled health care reform, has devastated tens of thousands of American families and devastated through death, maimings, displacement, disease, starvation and economic terrorism millions more Iraqi families.

All so a handful of contractors and oil cartels could get rich after we'd with manic, single-minded dispatch airlifted 363 tons of taxpayer money into a war zone so bundles and bricks of cash could get mailed back to the states or stowed away in offshore accounts or to get stuffed and forgotten in lockers and done with complete impunity. The sheer waste, the sheer disrespect shown toward the American and Iraqi people, toward our troops, toward those few anti war critics remaining should alone make a conscientious human being double over and physically retch in disgust.

So, really, what was there for me to say yesterday? To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, can any of us say that Iraq or the United States, for that matter, is actually better off in any way, shape or form than we were eight years ago?

1 Comments:

At March 21, 2010 at 1:06 AM, Blogger Stan B. said...

We got rid of Osama Bin Laden, made the Mid East safer, wiped out terrorism, got America back on top, and even got cheaper gas outta the whole deal!!!

Didn't we?

 

Post a Comment

<< Home

KindleindaWind, my writing blog.

All Time Classics

  • Our Worse Half: The 25 Most Embarrassing States.
  • The Missing Security Tapes From the World Trade Center.
  • It's a Blunderful Life.
  • The Civil War II
  • Sweet Jesus, I Hate America
  • Top Ten Conservative Books
  • I Am Mr. Ed
  • Glenn Beck: Racist, Hate Monger, Comedian
  • The Ten Worst Music Videos of all Time
  • Assclowns of the Week

  • Links to the first 33 Assclowns of the Week.
  • Links to Assclowns of the Week 38-63.
  • #106: The Turkey Has Landed edition
  • #105: Blame it on Paris or Putin edition
  • #104: Make Racism Great Again Also Labor Day edition
  • #103: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Toilet edition
  • #102: Orange is the New Fat edition
  • #101: Electoral College Dropouts edition
  • #100: Centennial of Silliness edition
  • #99: Dr. Strangehate edition
  • #98: Get Bentghazi edition
  • #97: SNAPping Your Fingers at the Poor edition
  • #96: Treat or Treat, Kiss My Ass edition
  • #95: Monumental Stupidity double-sized edition
  • #94: House of 'Tards edition
  • #93: You Da Bomb! edition.
  • #92: Akin to a Fool edition.
  • #91: Aurora Moronealis edition.
  • #90: Keep Your Gubmint Hands Off My High Pre'mums and Deductibles! edition.
  • #89: Occupy the Catbird Seat/Thanksgiving edition.
  • #88: Heil Hitler edition.
  • #87: Let Sleeping Elephants Lie edition.
  • #86: the Maniacs edition.
  • #85: The Top 50 Assclowns of 2010 edition.
  • #(19)84: Midterm Madness edition.
  • #83: Spill, Baby, Spill! edition.
  • #82: Leave Corporations Alone, They’re People! edition.
  • #81: Hatin' on Haiti edition.
  • #80: Don't Get Your Panties in a Twist edition.
  • #79: Top 50 Assclowns of 2009 edition.
  • #78: Nattering Nabobs of Negativism edition.
  • #77: ...And Justice For Once edition.
  • #76: Reading Tea Leaves/Labor Day edition.
  • #75: Diamond Jubilee/Inaugural Edition
  • #74: Dropping the Crystal Ball Edition
  • #73: The Twelve Assclowns of Christmas Edition
  • #72: Trick or Treat Election Day Edition
  • #71: Grand Theft Autocrats Edition
  • #70: Soulless Corporations and the Politicians Who Love Them Edition
  • Empire Of The Senseless.
  • Christwire.org: Conservative Values for an Unsaved World.
  • Esquire's Charles Pierce.
  • Brilliant @ Breakfast.
  • The Burning Platform.
  • The Rant.
  • Mock, Paper, Scissors.
  • James Petras.
  • Towle Road.
  • Avedon's Sideshow (the new site).
  • At Largely, Larisa Alexandrovna's place.
  • The Daily Howler.
  • The DCist.
  • Greg Palast.
  • Jon Swift. RIP, Al.
  • God is For Suckers.
  • The Rude Pundit.
  • Driftglass.
  • Newshounds.
  • William Grigg, a great find.
  • Brad Blog.
  • Down With Tyranny!, Howie Klein's blog.
  • Wayne's World. Party time! Excellent!
  • Busted Knuckles, aka Ornery Bastard.
  • Mills River Progressive.
  • Right Wing Watch.
  • Earthbond Misfit.
  • Anosognosia.
  • Echidne of the Snakes.
  • They Gave Us a Republic.
  • The Gawker.
  • Outtake Online, Emmy-winner Charlotte Robinson's site.
  • Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo
  • No More Mr. Nice Blog.
  • Head On Radio Network, Bob Kincaid.
  • Spocko's Brain.
  • Pandagon.
  • Slackivist.
  • WTF Is It Now?
  • No Blood For Hubris.
  • Lydia Cornell, a very smart and accomplished lady.
  • Roger Ailes (the good one.)
  • BlondeSense.
  • The Smirking Chimp.
  • Hammer of the Blogs.
  • Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.
  • Argville.
  • Existentialist Cowboy.
  • The Progressive.
  • The Nation.
  • Mother Jones.
  • Vanity Fair.
  • Salon.com.
  • Citizens For Legitimate Government.
  • News Finder.
  • Indy Media Center.
  • Lexis News.
  • Military Religious Freedom.
  • McClatchy Newspapers.
  • The New Yorker.
  • Bloggingheads TV, political vlogging.
  • Find Articles.com, the next-best thing to Nexis.
  • Altweeklies, for the news you won't get just anywhere.
  • The Smirking Chimp
  • Don Emmerich's Peace Blog
  • Wikileaks.
  • The Peoples' Voice.
  • Dictionary.com.
  • CIA World Fact Book.
  • IP address locator.
  • Tom Tomorrow's hilarious strip.
  • Babelfish, an instant, online translator. I love to translate Ann Coulter's site into German.
  • Newsmeat: Find out who's donating to whom.
  • Wikipedia.
  • Uncyclopedia.
  • anysoldier.com
  • Icasualties
  • Free Press
  • YouTube
  • The Bone Bridge.
  • Powered by Blogger