2,000 Days Since "Mission Accomplished"

Keith Olbermann will utter the words: "That's Countdown for this the 2,000th Day since the declaration of Mission Accomplished in Iraq. I'm Keith Olbermann. Goodnight and good luck" thus closing Monday night's MSNBC broadcast, two weeks before Election Day 2008.

If children have been born during this two year long Presidential campaign, imagine what life has been like the last 2,000 days for the families of: the 3,000+ military dead during that time, the thousands of Iraqis killed or wounded and the 150,000 US and coalition forces still far away from families on 4th and 5th tours of duty, suffering most during this global financial crisis and meltdown.

We remember the flight suit carrier deck photo op. The son, desperately trying to seize a shred of military glory reserved, deservedly, only for the father. The lies and misdirection witnessed like a cheap magic trick. The hijacking of our global goodwill and moral standing, in the name of a country still perilously close to civil war and internal destruction. My father passed away in 2003 and to see the land he loved resort to torture and military gulags, would have killed him.

And now this shameful election campaign, conducted by a decorated war hero, co-opted by his national party's leadership who feel only fear, smear and lies can win? We deserve much better.

Chris deserves better. He's my son, age 9 and knows that Daddy writes for a living and talks to people on radio and telly here in the UK to help them understand why this election is so important. Chris has such a pure linear mind, free from Spin and nuance. He cannot understand why a + b does not always = c. It does for him and it should for us.

He barely remembers Papa being away nights planning for that 15 February 2003 march in Amsterdam's DAM Square. On that cold day 400-Americans and his Mum and Dad joined a similar number of Iraqis and 120,000 Dutch nationals asking for only one thing, "let the UN inspectors finish hunting for WMD's."

21-million marched peacefully and united in 665 cities and countries around the world. So nothing hurt more deeply than a callous Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer saying of this unprecedented gathering, "we don't listen to focus groups."

Yes, I was naïve to think such a huge outpouring would lead men and women of leadership and conscience to pause and ask what brought so many of the world's peoples together in opposition to that war? I walked that day with grandmothers, fathers, children, students... many of us had never done this before and we were all desperately afraid of where this war would lead.

We watched Hans Blix give his UN report the day before, Valentine's Day. Instead of celebrating our 4th wedding anniversary, my patient wife helped our group get ready for the next day. We wanted to show The Netherlands (and the world) not all Americans supported this war.

The Iraq Platform's Faisel Nasser (he represented 50,000 displaced Iraqi nationals living in Holland) and I spent the days leading up to that Saturday riding around the Dutch media village in Hilversum. He, an engineer by trade, was brutally tortured by Saddam's men and yet he spoke so very passionately and eloquently. I, using my best Denglish (English-Dutch), talked about the stakes of such a war and occupation for us all. Together in interview after interview with gravitas, clarity and conviction we spoke calmly to show our host nation not all Americans were intolerant and impulsive cowboys, this war would affect us all. Fasiel and I, American and Iraqi, were friends, not enemies.

Something happened to touch the hearts of many Dutch citizens that day as we walked together arm-in-arm with our Iraqi exile brothers and sisters. For years afterwards, people would stop me on Amsterdam's streets and say 'thank you' for helping them to see not all Americans were like George W. Bush.

The night 'Shock and Awe' rained bombs down on Baghdad, we held a silent candlelight vigil by the US Consulate in Amsterdam while anarchists nearby frothed at the mouth and yelled at an empty building. Faisel and his inner group were our friends and none of us slept that horrible night worrying about families on both sides. We sat by telephones in a most improbable tableau. Who knew then, the true never-ending nightmare to come for us all? So many family, neighbours and friends would lay dead, injured or driven into the refugee camps of Syria and Lebanon because of the senseless violence of the last 2,000+ days.

Now the war barely merits an above the fold headline. It sits smothered by election silliness. When we should be having a great national debate, we're bogged down in lip-sticked pigs, one group crying terrorist at every corner and a shadowy group of election 'officials' poised to steal yet another election.

This is my country's last chance to get it right in the eyes of the world. I've lived abroad for 10-years and seen the world without the mud-stained SPIN blinkers of CNN and FOX. Here we read, yes... read and are blessed with multiple points of view across the EU and around the globe.

The verdict is unanimous; the USA is a country in great crisis, losing its grip, identity and way. As the 1st generation son of a naturalised immigrant citizen, I was taught a deep love of country.

I've fought like a patriot to expose lies and get the seriously deranged to listen. Millions of people across these EU lands were killed in the name of the Carpenter from Galilee. The divisions between the Christian far right and radical Islam are such we are headed down a very dangerously polarised path.

I have watched, use logic and urged people to do the right thing using every ounce of my being to stop the madness and tunnel vision that threatens now to tear my country apart from the inside out.

And... I'm getting tired of always fighting. I've lost friends in this campaign because clinging to a belief and point of view, regardless of the facts, is more important. We will never get it right if this election is stolen by the twin destructive powers of fear and hatred.

On 27 December, I pass the residency test and can apply for UK citizenship. If we get it wrong yet a third time and allow another hate-filled campaign to succeed at tearing away at the fabric of our country, I see no other choice but to say farewell and gratefully become one of Her Majesty's subjects where decency and rule of law are still at our core.

That is one 'Mission Accomplished' banner I hope never to see raised in my lifetime.

Comments

[SoutheastReview]

Whoa! I had no idea that the 'tunnel vision phenom' in regard to the election had so fully eviscerated 'viewer' attention(I mean, here in America, who "reads" anymore, except unheralded nerdaholics such as yours truly?). I figured that lack of response to my posts stemmed from my social democratic bent, or some social taint dating from High School, for Christ's sake. But here I see: something more profound and disturbing is at work.

People have invested in Senator Obama's election as I have never before witnessed. Perhaps FDR commanded similar obeisance; we need to remember that, without Communists and trade unionist troops whom they led and with whom they collaborated, the "New Deal" would have crashed in flames that Father Coughlin kept fanning from the pre-Rush A.M. Radio's fringes.

Maybe people really believe the yard signs, that "War Is Not the Answer." If true, however, then what was the question, folks? If connections between economic priorities--oil prices, empire, employment, military contracts, and on and on, ad nauseum--social oppression, and policies of 'eternal war' are not obvious, then the 'flower-child' perspective seems sweet.

When Barack bombs John in a couple of weeks, I wonder what is coming. The transition that Abe faced 158 years ago comes to mind, but we have a vaster and more interconnected world, in which the ignorance of Americans is, if anything, even more prevalent and astonishing than it was among Know-Nothings of the mid-nineteenth century.

[TTigerX2]

I was at an anti-war rally yesterday in downtown Vancouver, BC. There were a handful of young people holding signs with a wide array of things to protest. There was some singing --to the choir. For the most part the speeches were more about self·-aggr­andizement than stopping Canada's contribution to the Afghan war in which 97 have died and some 30,000 have been wounded. The conservative mainstream press won't record it and we walked away with a doleful hundred different agenda, not one any closer to resolution, especially the wars. In Canada, just over 40% of the eligible voters voted in last week's election and we ended up with a prime minister in a minority government who models himself after W. down to the smirk and wardrobe. His administration is awash in scandal and financial mis-steps and he still gets elected. Now he feels he has a mandate to enlarge Canada's role in NATO's moribund campaign in Afghanistan. There are many Americans saying they'll come to Canada if a third election is stolen by the corporate puppet masters in the USA. As an American living here I say, you have run out of places to run. If you want peace you will have to fight where you stand.

[Hoelder]

I feel your pain. I left my country, Germany in 1990. When Bush 43 was elected I tried to tell myself, it might not that bad, after all he is intellectually challenged. However my mind could not excuse so many autocratic policies. Starting a war against a country that did not attack ours was so opposed to the image of the US and my own upbringing. I worked in Asia when the towers fell, and when the war began. I knew Bush was not bluffing and the war started not because of Islamic terrorists but because the underachiever son had to prove to the father that he would finish where his father left off. By training I am very keen on discovering the underlying psyche of people and what makes them tick. I never thought I would live in a country that would torture, a country that learned from history. What I found is people dropping humanity in a heart beat for pro life, guns and death penalty. Bush had an abysmal record before he became president and it has proven itself. Often people in foreign countries approached me stressing the they hat Bush but like me and I apologize for the poor cognitive skills of voters in the US. There is a limit on how much apologizing you can do, for something you did not do. Believe me, if I had the chance to leave and a job somewhere, I would take it.

[krocklin]

If as many suggest, like the movie W, Bush took us to war based on his personal issues, what does that say about our system?
I hope there is a growing movement and awareness that this cannot be allowed again - that Congress must overwhelmingly approve such actions, not just "give authority" to the President to personally decide.

[Fromageball]

I studied abroad in Germany and spent a lot of time telling people that most of us hate Bush and did NOT vote for him. It does get tiring having to apologize over and over for the "poor cognitive skills of our voters", and this election has emphasized that. It's also so hard to believe that for some people, they are only voting for the republican ticket because of the evangelical Christian on the ballot who opposes womens reproductive rights/gay rights/etc, but they are not well-informed enough to realize that this country will further go down the tubes.

[CatfishJohn]

..even if they had found a microbe, an ounce, a scintilla of any form of WMD whose enormous alleged volumes bush precisely detailed and terrifed the nation into believing existed during his state of the union speech, there could be a shred of rationale for this war, however tenuous..but not one microbe, ounce or milligram of any of these things were ever found...how day 2,000 will pass into obscure history via the corporate media's silence and original acquiecence to the cavalcade of now proven lies tells me that today's corporate media is little more than "pravda- speak" and will continue to define newsworthiness solely throught the corporate prism... tomorrow is a day of disgrace, a day of shame for Bushco. but also the MSM....

[ratail]

665 countries? Huh?