You might expect the devastation from Hurricane Katrina to change everything, from our nightmares to the president’s priorities.
Katrina had that effect on most Americans. Support for war in Iraq tanked. With Katrina showing how shoddy our planning has been at home, most Americans now believe that the occupation of Iraq has made us less safe. Most think it is time to turn our attention to rebuilding America.
But the president’s agenda is increasingly our nightmare. Just as Katrina’s furies couldn’t rouse the president to shorten his monthlong vacation, its destruction did not move him to change his priorities. Katrina’s victims were still waiting for temporary housing in arenas across the country when the president announced that U.S. forces would remain in Iraq as long as he was at the helm. He saw no reason to delay his new tax cuts for the wealthy.
According to Bush, we can afford nation-building in Iraq, and the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and still give the wealthiest Americans another tax break. And he’s right – if you don’t mind letting him leave your children and grandchildren hocked in debt largely owed to Chinese and Japanese central bankers.
Bush came back from vacation finally, but he still is out of touch.
Why doesn’t the administration simply declare victory and announce a phased withdrawal of the forces? The U.S. got rid of the dictator. We helped push for national elections, creating a constitutional process. The U.S. has sacrificed 2,000 deaths with thousands more wounded or scarred. We’ve spent nearly $200 billion. Surely we’ve done enough.
We’ve wasted billions in no-bid crony contracts to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, even as Bush budgets were slashing the funds requested to strengthen the New Orleans levees. We’re generating more terrorists from the occupation than we killed in the invasion. Our Iraqi clients are happy to let us do the fighting against their rivals, even as they divide up the country, creating a Shiite theology in the South under Iranian influence, and a separatist Kurdistan in the North. Should young Americans continue to die for that?
Over 100,000 citizens marched against the war last weekend. But the president isn’t listening.
Everything the Bush crowd told us about the war turned out to be false. There was no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction. Hussein had no working ties with al-Qaida and wasn’t involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
To avoid admitting failure, the administration has just changed the stakes. It has gone from “imminent threat” to justify the invasion, to getting rid of a vicious dictator, to “leading a fight for democracy.” Now it is our army and our National Guard that are breaking under the strain of an occupation for which the administration did not plan.
It is time to go another way. It is time to turn our attention to rebuilding America.