Columnist Jamala Rogers
To win anything means that there’s some identifiable, achievable goal. In the war in Iraq we have neither.
Now that the election is over, U.S. citizens will be expecting a new strategy for the Bush-made war, including an exit plan. Can lawmakers come up with a realistic plan when the Bush team has deliberately misled all of us?
The situation in Iraqi is now more complicated than ever.
The Bush administration’s moving goals for the war have hit a brick wall. First the goal was to get weapons of mass destruction. When no such were found, then it was to stop the terrorists. When terrorism increased it, then it was to bring democracy to the Iraqi people – whatever that means. Most of the Iraqis have said they want none of that, especially when the U.S.-style of democracy is defined by corporate interests.
Between the suppression of truth by the corporate media and our self-insulation about what’s really going on, the facts are bleeding through. Yet, the Commander-in-Chief insists on “staying the course.”
The war machine has spent $340 billion of our tax dollars in Iraq. That amount could have paid for about 6 million sorely needed additional public school teachers nationally, including 90,000 in Missouri, or provided health insurance for over 200 million children. Even with that kind of budget, troops don’t have the equipment nor support services they need.
After a bloody month in October, 20,000-plus U.S. troops have been wounded since 2003. Half of these were patched up and sent back in again. The U.S. casualty numbers are hurtling towards 3,000. Over a quarter of the dead are men and women of color; the bulk of these are black and brown souljahs. They must also fight a daily battle at home for their human rights under a so-called democracy.
Let’s not forget the U.S.’s chummy relationship with Saddam Hussein before they broke up. When Hussein refused to kiss and make up, that’s when all war broke out.
In the early 1980’s, then-President Ronald Reagan sent a special envoy to re-establish diplomatic relations with Hussein. Hussein was the same fascist dictator who harbored known terrorists, who abused the human rights of his own citizens and who used chemical weapons on resistant Iranians and disloyal Iraqis. Reagan was interesting in pursuing access to oil, gaining strategic position in the Middle East and protecting allies in the region.
The U.S. envoy was none other than Donald “Dummy Rummy” Rumsfeld.
The point is that this war which looks like it started in 2003 has a long and twisted history. It is like a dungeon with rooms we don’t even know about. There are rooms with fake doors.
The elephant in the war is the “other war”: the civil war between the Shi’ites and Sunnis. Perhaps the reason that the U.S. can’t get the Iraqi forces together is that the native folks remember U.S. operatives playing both ends against the middle. It was a necessary ploy to have the Kurds, Sunnis and Shi’ites fighting one another so the U.S. could carry out its mission. Now, because Bush says so, these groups are supposed to come together in a big group hug with the snap of his finger.
I want the war to end as bad as anyone. I’m just trying to brace myself for what it really is going to take to both pull out of Iraq and also be responsible for the “collateral damage” this country has created.