The estimated total cost(not including the cost of lost lives and devastated families) to US taxpayers of our Iraq misadventure will come to about $4Trillion dollars when it's all said and done. And for what, a destabilized power vacuum in the middle east, ripe for invasion by Iran?
Here's my list of dubious what for's regarding the Iraq war:
1: The American people are nothing if not vengeful and rightly so. Given this, Bush had to attack somebody following 9/11 and he definitely wanted to avenge his father's not being allowed to kill Saddam Hussein, so why not attack Iraq and kill two birds with one stone, even if the links to 9/11 and evidence of WMD's were sketchy at best?
2: America's military-industrial complex likes to purge old weaponry from the stockpiles and test new weaponry on an actual battlefield every 10 years or so and Bosnia and Grenada were receding rapidly in the rear-view mirror. We needed a "real war" to do this.
3: Because of weeping, bleeding-heart press coverage, Americans get weak in the knees when it comes to human-rights violations in other nations, and we tend to demand our politicians do something about it. Saddam Hussein being a particularly bad character provided Bush with a great bad-guy to go against. Purging Iraq of such a brutal dictator was certainly worth American sacrifices in blood and treasure, right?
4: Following along the lines of #2, the Pentagon must keep our defense contractors employed, productive, and happy with huge weapons purchases or they'll sell all their good stuff to rogue nations and mercenaries who'll then kill US soldiers with it....not good politically. And you can't justify massive weapons purchases without a war in which to deploy them.
5: The neo-conservatives, of which Bush was one, believe that it's the US's sole responsibility to police the world for human-rights violations since we're the only nation who can project force anywhere. They think that invading and occupying small but aggressive nations with dictators is practically our manifest destiny....like settling the west or something. Neo-cons love meddling in the affairs of other nations and imposing, by force using our military, our own brand of democracy on them and calling it liberation of the oppressed. We're still so apologetic about slavery that we'll go anywhere to liberate an oppressed people just to prove how virtuous we are now.
Do any of those reason even come close to rising to the level of war-worthiness? It's all a charade and political kabuki theater.
America needs the stability that comes with brutal dictatorships in the middle east far more than we need human rights in the middle east.
H/T to regular reader Billy for the picture.
2 comments:
Where is Ed? Come clean. What have you done with our Ed?
I'm still here Isaac. My cynical disillusionment with my government has reached an apex and I find it increasingly difficult to not see the self-serving, ulterior motives associated with every move a politician makes, of either party. I'm sick of being at war.....it's practically a way of life for us now.
I reread 1984 recently and perpetual war was the prime rationale for controlling the people and the economy. I'll be damned if we aren't living it.
If there were such a thing as peaceful anarchy, I'd embrace that lifestyle. Off-grid living becomes more and more appealing each day.
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