The tragic milestone has arrived, the Iraq War lasted longer than the Second World War, with
the President telling us that many more days are left in his tragedy drenched in blood..
In 1957 Senator John F. Kennedy gave a major address opposing European colonial
policies and the French colonial dominance of Algeria. JFK warned that these policies and practices gave aid, comfort and strength to Soviet communists who prayed on misery, exploitation and corruption.
Sound familiar?
One can reread JFK's speeches between 1957
and Algerian independence after he became
President, and substitute "terrorists" for "Soviet
communists." It is eerie. It is true. It is a hard
lesson for President Bush and the country he
so wrongly and disastrously pushed to war,
through the politics of fear, and the obsession
of ideology.
In a just world, President Bush will take this
sad Sunday and apologize to the people of
America and the people of Iraq, accept his
responsibility, discuss what lessons he has
learned, and move to set things right.
That is what JFK did after the Bay of Pigs;
he accepted responsibility, grew from his
mistakes, and saved the world from nuclear
war when he removed the Soviet missiles
from Cuba. That is what the President should
do.
He will not. George W. Bush is no JFK, nor is
he Reagan, nor is he George Herbert Walker
Bush, nor is he even Nixon.
I have written here and elsewhere recently
of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and would simply state
again
that what America needs, what the world
needs, is the kind of aspirational leadership
that Jack and Bobby provided.
It is a time, on this sad Sunday, to revisit Jack
Kennedy's criticism of European colonialism
in the Third World during the 1950's. George
W. Bush speaks of democracy but his war policy is the lineal descendant
of the colonial
practices that John Kennedy so wisely spoke
against.
It was not democracy to seek to install Mr.
Chalabi as leader of Iraq after an American
invasion. Mr. Chalabi's relationship to freedom
and democracy in Iraq was zero. He would
have been a leader in Iraq with no support
within Iraq, installed by Americans, with the
result that would only help the Iranian mullahs.
It was not democracy to raise false fears to
drive America to war and spy on Americans
who opposed those policies.
It was not democracy to establish an Iraq
Reconstruction Authority that was run by an
American with the attitude of a Roman
Proconsul.
It was not democracy to install political hacks
in key reconstruction positions, then allow
some of the greatest greed, corruption and
incompetence in the history of capitalism.
It was not democracy to steal and waste money that was meant to build
hospitals and schools, so some made fortunes, while troops gave their
lives and Iraqis suffered unendurable misery.
It was not democracy to peddle lies to promote
fear to push for war that corrupted even the
front page of the New York Times. It was not
democracy to promote propaganda to peddle
war that corrupted the intolerant editorial pages
of the Washington Post. Nor was it democracy
to accuse newspapers of treason when they
belatedly printed truth.
It was not democracy to have a Vice President
almost universally seen as the free world's
leading advocate for torture. It was not
democracy to try to keep this torture secret.
It was not democracy force out the Chief of
Staff of the Army for daring to speak the truth
and it was not democracy to force out the
Navy lawyer who won a historic case for
justice before the United States Supreme
Court.
It was not democracy to hold secret White House meetings with oil
company lobbyists
where insiders passed around maps of Iraqi
oil fields.
This whole project of an invasion, to install
an American-imposed shill who only helped
Iranians,to install a Proconsul-like American
over the people of Iraq, to surround him with
corrupt henchmen and cronies who misused
money intended for schools and hospitals to
help the children and suffering of Iraq was not
democracy.
It was rooted in the colonial abuses and
executed with the same catastrophic results.
JFK warned about this in the 1950's; saying
correctly such practices only helped communist
enemies and George Bush was warned about
his policies that would only help our enemies
in Iraq, Iran.Al Qaeda and elsewhere.
It is time to bring back the American foreign
and security policies of John and Robert
Kennedy rooted in American purpose and
aspirational ideals that offer the hope of a
better life, not endless war.
It is time for the United States to once again
offer comprehensive plans for peace in the
Middle East, a subject I will return to soon,
while we rebuil the military from the damage
that these catastrophic policies caused.
It is time to recognize that the Project for
the New American Century was deadly
wrong, catastrophically wrong, historically
wrong. The world does not want endless
preemptive wars, occupations, proconsuls,
and shills surrounded by crony corruption.
Now we know: at this sad time the war in Iraq
is longer than the Second World War, so:
On the matter of George W. Bush, Richard
B. Cheney, neoconservative fantasists and
their partisans and profiteers we should throw
out the baby, throw out the bathwater, and
throw out whole damn thing.
We should say with finality: George W. Bush was wrong, and John F.
Kennedy was right,