From Castlereagh to Kissinger there have always been government officials capable of explaining why, if attacked by a group of Saudis based in Afghanistan, tens of thousands of Iraqis must pay with their lives.
Sean Hannity, with the jut-jawed certainty born of indifference to facts, can yammer nightly about what is and isn't true. William Bennett, a bloated bag o' gas who has never fought for anything more consequential than grant money, can title his book "Why We Fight." William Kristol, proof that asininity doesn't skip a generation, defines the ethical parameters of debate.
Meanwhile, the Friedmans and Bidens of the land can write and babble for two years about how events are rapidly reaching a crossroads; while Democratic hacks like Daschle, who treated the 2002 Iraq war authorization as a campaign impediment to be gotten in front of, have moved on to sucking up lobbying dollars.
It is easy to see evil for what it is...deliberately blowing yourself up amid a group of candy-eating children can have no other name. If only somewhere an imam was drafting a fatwa calling for self-immolation of the Vietnamese Buddhist sitting-in-the-street-with-a-can-of-gas-variety. The first universal law of this century should be that, whatever political point you think you are trying to make, you must only kill yourself.
But it was our invasion that has created the conditions for these bastards to blow up the children. It was our bombs, dropped with shock & awe and a stirring Fox News musical score, that ripped apart innocent limbs and liquefied innocent faces. Iraqis who died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, because they panicked at a checkpoint, because they suddenly walked out of what was supposed to be an empty room, are just as dead. And to them we say...what?
If you're Bill Safire, you say that Mohamed Atta had a meeting in Prague. If you're Christopher Hitchens, you say that Abu Nidal had an apartment in Baghdad. If you're Colin Powell, with your vial-sized integrity, you say nothing at all as you move on to your next highly paid speaking engagement.
If you're cable news, two words that should be permanently enjoined from following one another, you just mic up Catholic dingbat Kate O'Beirne and Bob Shrum -- he of the scarves and limos and expense accounts and unparalleled record of abject failure -- and have them alternate meaningless talking points.
Over at the Pentagon...would anyone with quasi-functioning synapses purchase a preowned vehicle from oily spokesman Larry DeRita? While Rummy's act has grown as tired and pathetic as the mincing, stream of consciousness tripe Robin Williams has been passing off as talent for decades.
Perhaps, like defenders of our strutting "bring it on" president, we should take solace in the positives. The four hours of daily electricity. The prospect of running water equaling the amount of open sewage. How we are fighting them in Falluja and King's Cross, so we don't have to fight them over here. Yes, freedom is marching in Iraq, behind thick concrete walls while trying to avoid crowds.
So the Left rallies around Cindy Sheehan...a grieving mother doing noble work. She will accomplish exactly what? "BUSH MEETS WITH SHEEHAN, PROCLAIMS HIMSELF FOOL, ORDERS TROOPS HOME." If we came home tomorrow, we'd be celebrating...what? Witness the fetid cockroach that is James Dobson. Multiply the power of his insanity by access to real power and you have the madness of Shariah law. Such will be the parting gift from our occupation.
What's to be done? Maybe only little things that allow us to keep some small vestige of our national pride. Perhaps every night at 8, the lying sack of dung that is our Vice President could emerge naked from his mansion, allowing random passersby (who can refrain from vomiting at the sight) to jab at him for ten minutes with pointed sticks.
As for the child in the White House; he seems a sallow, sunken chested, slightly effeminate little man who, at 80, will still be uninterested at how blood got on his hands.
The rest of us? That's easy. Everyone, ultimately, dies in vain.
Advertisement