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.

Comments

[Vanna]

Always excellent, thank you, Ms. Smiley.

[PapaJim]

Jane, your blog is a double edge sword for me. I agree whole heartedly with what you say, but it depresses me greatly to read these same points over and over again while at the same time seeing that absolutely nothing is being done to correct the situation.

The Bush/Cheney cabal could not have damaged this wonderful nation as much as they have without the passivity of the Democrats. The D's are still spineless and bend over and grad their ankles even today when they have controll of Congress. Seems like they are going to make the warrantless wiretapping of US citizens permanent this week.

Everyone you mentioned usedand abused somebody, but they ALL used and abused the US citizens the most. How tragic it is that we may well have lost our nation to these scumbags.

[LogicalPagan]

That was a really insightful analysis of the current mess. A mess I am happy to see, but dearly wish it could have occurred about 4 and a half years ago before most of the pain, suffering, and humuliation happened.
I do take issue with one point. You should be careful about accepting the conservative argument that they are not interested in government. They know exactly what they are doing and have no problem with big government. It's just that their goals are completely different from the rest of society.
The conservatives are quite happy to run a huge financial bureaucracy. The Fed and other institutions happily throw millions out of their jobs so as to be able to exert a downward prossure on prices and keep things cheap for the elites. There are several other ways to control inflation, but this one has the benefit of keeping most of us scared, powerless, and afraid.
The conservatives are happy to run a large chunk of government to enforce patents and monopolies not only here, but increasingly everywhere else too. Just think of the many government agencies that have to be coordinated to get trade and patent enforcement implemented in Europe, Africa, and Asia, so that pharma and Microsoft can keep their billions while millions die from curable diseases and lack of technology.
Finally, there is another decent sized bureaucracy that is well thought out and run by conservatives. When was the last time anyone saw special visas and immigration quotas for doctors, lawers, and accountants? We can argue about H1-b visas to throw scientists and engineers out of work, but why do we stop there? Could it be because the old school "professions" are the primary domain of our oldest American families and the Ivy League schools they support?
No, don't let them make your talking points for you. Conservatives love big government when it benefits them. Just not the rest of us.

[Remonster]

Thank you Jane for putting into words what I couldn't express myself. This is a sad, sordid, and tragic betrayal of the publics trust and the lives of our fellow citizens. And in my heart I think we can now see the outline of the setting of the sun on our democratic experiment.

[MsLiz]

You summed up the truth beautifully. However you left out two more culpable parties: The American voter, who elected George Bush and forgot everything learned from Vietnam in entering the war in Iraq; and the media, who allowed Bush to govern without questioning his policies.

[Lolly]

About the American voter, I think this statement applies:

"The citizenry, suckers that we were, bought it because it appealed to their worst selves. "

It's not that uncommon these days to find Bush voters who claim that they were misled, couldn't have know, whatever.

I say, every con man knows that a con works best when the mark WANTS to be conned. These people wanted to believe all the racist, sexist, hate-filled arrogance the Republicans were spewing, so they did. They thought they would take it all to the bank, kick the crap out of the rest of the world, and never look up from their video games while doing it.

[reedmaker]

MsLiz: One of the clearest ways that democracy has broken down is that Bush was definitely not elected twice, and maybe not even once, and he is still sitting in the White House. The American voter might, in general, be apathetic and easily manipulated, but I think placing blame there is losing sight of what is really going on.

[politicky]

Uh MsLiz?

*sigh*

voting info here:
http://www.bradblog.com/

media info here:
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=Robert%20McChesney&index=blended&page=1

[reedmaker]

Jane, This is so fierce, eleoquent and true, I feel breathless. Thank you for saying all of this with such utter clarity.