Who's Sorry Now?
It was a pleasant weekend for those of us who have been against the Iraq War from the beginning. The Washington Post had an article on the bitterness and regrets of those in the Bush administration who concocted and ran the war and have now left. Some of them have nightmares. Nothing like the nightmares of the prisoners of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo or the Black Sites, but hey, a few nightmares are progress. Maybe they will have more, and then they will have mental breakdowns and they can experience electroshock therapy -- that would be a nice payback for them. In the New York Times magazine, there was an article about Kanan Makiya, an exiled Iraqi scholar who was a big cheerleader for the war, and who seems to have given Bush and Cheney a rationale that they could use as a cover for their real motives. At the end of the article, there's an interesting interview with Ali Allawi, who was the Minister of Finance in the Iraqi transitional government in 2005 and into 2006. Allawi was opposed to the war, but went to Iraq to try and put Humpty back together again. He failed. And, of course, there's Blackwater. Whoops. Americans have recently gotten a good look at our very own right wing death squad (paid for by us to the tune of 445,000 per soldier, per year), and we know there are more RWDSs where that one came from. And I loved the headline of David "the Pig" Brooks' op-ed in last week's Times, "The Republican Collapse" -- is there a lovelier phrase? I used to send letters to David Brooks asking when the New York Times was going to fire him. He never responded.
All the same, though, the emerging consensus (another vast rightwing conspiracy to my mind) is that everyone's intentions were good, if not great. Makiya, for example, knew all the horrors that Saddam Hussein had committed against the Iraqis and the Iranians, and just wanted to get him out of there, even if the odds, as he calculated them, against actually establishing a stable government were 20-1. He thought Ahmed Chalabi was going to be the Nelson Mandela of Iraq. And the same for Meghan O' Sullivan, who was about THIRTY when the fates of the Iraqis were put into her hands -- she just wanted to help. As for Karl Rove and that Permanent Republican Majority -- well, he didn't mean to hurt anyone -- really, the one who's been hurt here is Karl himself (also the refrain of Clarence Thomas).
What I see here, especially when you add in the Israelis and the Neocons and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, is a perfect storm of opportunism, opportunism compounded of ignorance, greed, self-regard, power-lust, and sheer shallowness. "Opportunism" is when you use someone else for your own ends, thinking that you will pretend to give the other guy what he wants and in doing so, you will get what you want. I think the World Champion Opportunist Award these days goes to those Israelis who ally themselves with the American Rapture people, knowing full well that in Rapture theology, the wholesale conversion of the Jews is the prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus. These Israelis will work with people who anticipate another Holocaust -- who hope for it -- in order to get American money and arms for Israel. That is opportunism taken to a new level -- but not that new.
The Iraqi exiles thought they would use the American government and military to get their country back. The Neocons and Israel thought they would use the Americans to get rid of Saddam and remake the Middle East so that Israel would be more secure. Rove thought he would use "war" to entrench his power base. Cheney thought he would use the exiled Iraqis to get access to Iraqi oil fields and to establish an authoritarian presidency in the US. Bush thought he would use everyone to get a sense that he had both avenged his father and outdone him. Tony Blair thought he would use his alliance with Bush to press some of his own programs, like helping Africa and distinguishing Britain from Europe. Rumsfeld thought he would use the war to remake and outsource the army, thereby enriching his friends. Erik Prince thought he would use the American taxpayers to get rich and also to move toward an American theocracy. The religious right thought they would use the war and consequent "patriotism" issues to consolidate, fleece, and militarize their base. The Free Market theorists thought they would use taxpayer money to experiment with privatizing the Iraqi economy. The result is failure and recrimination, not to mention a refusal by almost every one of these people to take responsibility for what they've done. As they see it these days, bad things in Iraq just happened somehow.
Opportunism often looks good on the surface, but it is based on manipulation rather than relationship, and masks an absolute misunderstanding of human nature. What happened with the Iraq war was no mistake and no accident. It grew out of the failure of conservatives, from the time of Ronald Reagan, at least, to understand and accept the necessity of government in a complex and populous society, and therefore to think about what government could and should do. The more they refused to think about it, the less they knew. Reagan, with his smiling soothing phrases and his tone of benign condescension, served as an appealing front man for what the nasty and unlamented Lee Atwater himself called "ruthless ambitions and moral decay". Reagan Republicans thought of government as a mechanism for increasing their own power and wealth. They never accepted that the US has many different regions, ethnicities, and enclaves, all of which have equal claim to citizenship. From at least the 1960s, the Republican Party has worked actively to pit region against region, class against class, and ethnicity against ethnicity, and to reap profits therefrom. Men like Karl Rove came to think habitually in terms of propaganda, manipulation, and deceit.
These were the people Makiya and Chalabi turned to for help against Saddam. These were people who were so cavalier that they didn't bother to read the reports of their own experts about how difficult the aftermath of the invasion would be. Allawi was smarter, though. He says in the Times, "Ahmad Chalabi, Kanan Makiya, all of these people became media stars, but their influence on decision making was next to nothing. I can't believe that a person like Wolfowitz or Cheney or whoever it was in the neocon cabal would allow themselves to be manipulated... They are far too cynical. They have their own agendas. And these agendas were boosted by Iraqis who seemed to be singing from the same song sheet. The Iraqis gave them credibility, gave them substance. But I don't think they were influenced by them."
Various rightwingers maintain that if the Iraq adventure had worked out, we would all be praising the Bush administration. What they don't understand is that it could not have worked out because of how it was conceived and the shallowness of the motives behind it. This was evident in 2003. In fact, it was evident in 2000. When the vote in Florida turned out to be rigged, or at least suspect, Bush and Cheney did, not what honorable men to, but what opportunists do -- they used intimidation (against the vote counters) and influence (on the Supreme Court, notably with Clarence Thomas) to seize what might or might not have been theirs by right (everyone who has read The Best Election Money Can Buy knows that Jeb and Katherine Harris also set up the Florida vote ahead of time, but I think it was in the counting that the real theft took place). Bush could have exerted himself both publicly and privately to make the vote count as scrupulous as possible. He did not. The apple was offered to him and he bit it. He never understood what elections represent in the US -- not seizure of power but acceptance of responsibility -- and so he has never understood his position or his job. His idea and Cheney's idea was that they were going to use their jobs to get what they could for themselves and their powerbase, just as they used the election controversy to get the job. They have surrounded themselves with people of like mind and those who don't think this way have left or been forced out.
The clusterf**k of opportunism that is the last seven years was bound to end in a cluster of fingerpointing and grievance. People hate feeling used and betrayed, even as they are using and betraying others. Remember when Bush expressed his annoyance at the ingratitude of the Iraqis? And have you noted the resentment of the religious right at being the last to know that nobody in the Bush administration actually cares about their agenda? Were the Republicans grateful to Katherine Harris? Nope -- they let her humiliate herself in front of the whole nation. Those Iraqis -- they sure don't show much loyalty to Blackwater. Even Alan Greenspan has done what he can to divorce himself from the very people he sucked up to five years ago.
Is it possible to have no sense of civic responsibility at all? Yes -- that's what Free Market theory, and the last generation of Republican culture is about. It elevates commerce and deal-making above every other human activity, and therefore glorifies opportunism. A generation of coaching by Free Market gurus has robbed Americans of the means of a decent existence.The reason we can't get out of Iraq is that none of the opportunists dares to admit why he or she wanted to make a war there in the first place, and so we, the American people, don't actually know what the goal was and can't ever judge whether it has been achieved. Though Cheney's goal was to secure the oil, he can't admit that to the Iraqis, who don't want to give up the oil. If the Iraqis' goal was to use our military to fight the battle and then take over themselves, they ceded that goal every time they flattered the Americans. If the Israelis consider their existence to be worth every American sacrifice of money, corruption, and human life, they dare not say so. If the military industrial complex really is happy to profit from death and destruction, do they actually pretend to their children that they are human? A lot of PTSD says they do. I could go on.
In order to gain power, the Republicans long ago (and knowingly, thanks, Mr. Atwater and others) handed the citizenry, and themselves, a bill of goods, a set of philosophical and economic ideas that were bankrupt. The citizenry, suckers that we were, bought it because it appealed to their worst selves. The price we have paid and will continue to pay in Iraq for this bad bargain is a steep one, and could break the bank. But if we don't understand how we got here, we could buy it again, because the politicians and the pundits still have it for sale.
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I don't know if having a nightmare emerge from the murky and vague recesses of one's mind into the sharpened image of reality constitutes a 'pleasant' weekend.
Rejecting the entire concept of 'first strike', or to put it less imperialistically, engaging in a 'pre-emptive action', doesn't automatically discharge someone to the peanut gallery of those wanting to be proved correct.
Although not endorsing the action that has distracted us away from pursuing those directly responsible for the 9/11/2001 attacks, one might still remain hopeful that those who were certain this endeavor would yield positive results, knew what they were doing. It may in fact simply be surrendering to an 'ends justifying the means' position. But a friendly albeit corrupt unified Iraq would have been better than what we are seeing evolve currently.
With Kurds cutting their own deal with Hunt, it becomes increasingly more difficult to believe that there would be a greater incentive to stay aligned with the Shia than pursuing an expansion of the autonomy they had under Hussein. This of course will threaten the Turks and Persians.
The Shia, now apparently willing to cut the strings of American protection are now finding political alliances with Tehran, and an ability to fill the American arms supply void with purchases from China. A Bagdad/Tehran pact would put the Sunni dominated Arab world into apoplexy and resolved only by another U.S. attempted regime change.
It wasn't that long ago when the question: "Is Iraq and the rest of the world better off without Hussein" was rhetorical.
This nightmare continues to grow and the hope of awakening to a stablized Middle East has all but vanished.
No, it wasn't a pleasant weekend. Regardless of how many 'opportunists' face planted or how many 'I told you so' barbs were inflicted. Pleasant weekends have been cancelled until our sons and daughters come home.
Who's sorry now, well I guess that would be just about all of us.
This article ought to be tattooed backwards on Bush and Chaney's foreheads so they can read it every time they begin to admire themselves. What monumental chaos they have left the US and the world. And they will never pay for it--we will be the ones to pay over and over. Brava Jane.
Well, I think we all ought to congratulate ourselves. Two hundred and twenty-four years is a pretty good run.
So what's next?
Give me liberty, or give me, uh,... don't get fooled again.
A thoughtful piece.
This is the most comprehensive catalog of the cast of characters in this modern pirate tale Ms Smiley.However having led us into the desert these geniuses insist on keeping us there for ever.The sense of impotent rage at having our military taken over by fools in the grip of corporations and foreign governments is made worse by a gutless opposition.Only economic collapse will bring it to an end when China refuses to loan us any more money.
The searing clarity with which you state all this stuff is a combination of your lucid understanding and your laser-like precision of description. I'm saving this post on my hard drive, Jane, with all your other recent posts.
My goodness what an altogether superb piece of writing. Never have I read a piece at which I marveled more over the perfect accuracy of each expression. This has the ring of truth in it, especially in the analysis of how the interplay of opportunists yields a situation in which everyone is trapped by his own deceits.
You are our best treasure, Jane. I am so very very glad you have written these words.
Excellent post, Jane. Unfortunately, just as Lew Wasserman used Ronald Reagan to run SAG for his own fun and profit, and then leased him to the Republicans for their own, the most powerful political force today seems to be pulling the strings from K Street.
Amen.
After the simpering, monarchist, white boy Reagan and his tax cuts and trickle down wealth-to-the-top; the dangerous, cynical manipulation of theorcratic fundamentalism by the Republicans and their amoral, monotheistic-gangster pals in Israel; bodies stacked across Central and South America; cocaine flights into Mena, Arkansas while they invented their heinous Drug War; Panama slaughter to get to their drug running pal, Noriega; Iran Contra; BCCI terror and drug money laundering; Savings & Loan rip-off; Kenny Boy; goons paid to cross state lines to terrorize citizens counting votes ordered to be counted by a Supreme Court of a sovereign state; Supreme Court corporatists and their mentally ill black boy who poses no questions; the creation of all their Hussein and Bin Laden Frankensteins; their 9/11 Commission Coverup Report. And now the Iraq invasion-torture-war crimes with no long term population, conservation, or energy plan in sight for our posterity. What we have here is a bunch of corrupt, malevolent, sociopathic hillbillies - very real Hitlerian caricatures. Did I leave out the slut-whore-corporate media? I try, but sometimes words cannot express. Perhaps the question we need to be asking at this time in our history is, "How would our forefathers react to this?" "How would Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Kennedy react to this?"
This is good too but in a different way. like Solzhenitsyn, we have to catalogue the horror to get the reality of it in our teeth.
How would those guys react to this? I don't think they'd be able to: it's outside their paradigm. They'd be as thunderstruck as we are. What we need is a silent, solemn return to adult governance with no tiny shred of the infantile polarizing and fatuous demogogueries that made this mess. After the horrors of the French revolution, fashion turned to black clothes, long beards for men and solemn demeanors. Unfortunately the South missed the memo and made war over slavery. So the solemn got depressed and drunk. We need them back, sober. In black. Solemn. Contemptuous of violence.
Why is it up to the old hippies? Where are the 30-somethings, where are the college students, where are the 21 yr. olds? Let's all do it together, not just depend on those who held our government accountable during the VietNam era.
I must assume the absence of comment means that we all agree. Takes me back to my personal wonderment at the lack of action on the part of the millions of americans that agree with these sentiments. Pondered whatever happened to the legions of protesters from the late 60's and 70's that were the excuse for a lot of the right winger downhill slide of the leadership of America. Where did they go? Millions of old folk now, with nothing left to lose, doing nothing to do the right thing one more time.
Lots of us are near death and have watched all this downhill slide knowing it for what it is. Every new legislation extending rights to those that already have it (in theory) enforced in a way that means extending nothing to each new minority it would embrace; instead eroding the rights and priviledges of everyone else. There, that'll teach you liberal do-gooders. Told you all governments are evil ! Do we have to draw you a picture?
Take a good look at the history of Government actions in the wonderful USA: It only responds in favor of the masses ... when it has overreacted against it own people with a bit too much violence, Calling out the troops against the veterans camped out in Washington, or the shooting of a few college protesters at Kent State. It is prepared to do that right now, and will slip up with it's Blackwater Gangs on some not so far distant occasion. Keep your cameras on the ready to capture the evidence ... because they're all gonna lie thru their teeth about the facts when they wipe out a bunch of it's own citizens.
As to those hippy's from days gone by, that have idly sat by watching it crumble: Evidence is that words on paper are still just words offering only false hope ! Maybe, they erode in retirement, awaiting Al Quaida, or some other foreign aid to End the american dream rather than taking action for themselves.
Good points miamirat, but why did we let Nixon off so easily with a pardon? Didn't we seal our fate even then? Was it the drugs or the Rolling Stones which distracted us and made us think the adults were taking care of things?
I think the lesson of Nixon was repeated in the Election of 2000. We sat by as the Supreme Court finished off the rights of Florida to determine its own election results, and with it, the rights of citizens under the 14th Amendment. And what could we do? The last arbiter of disputes in the Nation had spoken.
I think what is called for is citizen action too, but what action? When the institutions which we instituted to govern us fail us, we must replace them if they cannot be fixed. By what mechanism? Revolution? Let's destroy the mercenaries first. Failing that, we must die in very large numbers to make the necessary changes. I think the citizenry understands this.
And it was not the Hippies who changed course, actually, it was the "silent majority" which Nixon subscribed to that he ultimately could not face any longer once his truth was disclosed.
Yes, the Hippies, Yippies and all who are left will rise again. But they were but the vanguard of power, giving shape to it, not substance. The silent majority must again stand witness to the truth and turn away their support for the evil which controls this nation now.
did allawi actually say "whoever it was in the *Neocon Cabal* would allow themselves to be manipulated" ???
holy crap. next person that says "tinfoil hat" should get bitch-slapped quick.
"David "the Pig" Brooks" -
another great post, ms. smiley...
It was a delight to read your post like a psychological history of our times. If you turned it into a book it would serve us right.
"Various rightwingers maintain that if the Iraq adventure had worked out, we would all be praising the Bush administration"
Would, could, smooch,maybe, schmaybe; if my grandmother had wings she would have been flying. If the cows did not come home we would have gone looking for them. If all dogs were like "Snoopy" we would all be happy.
If Ariana did not exist we would have to invent her. If he Alan Greenspan was as smart
as he claims to be, and a lot of fools given credit for, he would be Bill Gates.
I remember the Reagan years. That was when being a selfish pig became a patriotic thing to do. And Ronald would just laugh and crack a joke about something that had nothing to do with the question at hand. And people thought, "Well heck, what do we really need a government for anyway? I could afford a VCR if it wasn't for those taxes."
So they thought that by crippling government, starving it to death, they could free themselves from the inherent burden. They neglected to realize that government was going to exist anyway, and it was going to cost money. Now their "less government is better" philosophy has come to bite them in the asses. Not only do we have more government, more restrictive government, and exponentially more expensive government, we have nothing to show for it but an open sore.
The choice is clear: ignore government and hope it goes away, thereby giving it free reign to do everything wrong we have seen, or recognize it as a mundane necessity, and do it as well as possible. But that latter solution requires active, willing, and motivated participation by a majority of Americans. OK, so maybe Rove is right. Maybe we deserve what we are getting. When are we going to wake up?
This is without a doubt the best post I have ever read anywhere, anytime. BRAVO!!!!!
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