The Failed Invasion of Iraq

Jason Zengerle at The Plank points out that Bill O’Reilly, of all people, has called the Iraq War not only a failure, but an avoidable failure. Zengerle draws a parallel between O’Reilly’s pronouncement and Walter Cronkite’s similar declaration during Vietnam:

After Walter Cronkite pronounced Vietnam a stalemate, LBJ famously told his aides, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

The recent wave of unpleasant stories of massacres, alleged massacres, and casualties-by-mistake (including children) in Iraq, combined with Bush’s historically low approval ratings and the brink of some serious gains for the Democrats in November (despite their fundamental lack of “vision” and their reliance on the same corporate influence and cynical attitudes toward their constituents), reveal two important things about current public consciousness: First, the American public is perfectly capable of respecting and being concerned for U.S. troops, even in the midst of a near-universal consensus that this war was and is horribly, horribly wrong. This first fact is especially important because the war-borgs have traditionally relied on conflating “respect for our soldiers” with unquestioning support for “the mission.” There is nothing to suggest that this conflation is the least bit successful anymore, and considerable evidence that it is counterproductive. It’s irrefutably clear that we can love, honor, respect and even admire the heroism of rank-and-file military personnel, and even contextualize (if not forgive) criminal brutalities in their midst, while understanding that the fundamental blame for this fiasco rests with the ruling class (including opportunistic Democrats).

The second fact about public consciousness is that the Bush administration’s arrogance and incompetence have not only destroyed what little shallow support existed for this war, but also the support for any future military adventures, including those ostensibly required for fighting the eternal, unending War on Terror. Skepticism, mistrust, and contempt—which the ever-shrinking right translates as treason, are the new order of the day. We have entered a new period of rejectionist thinking where military deployment is concerned. And without the usual rhetorical tricks up their sleeves, the war-borgs will have a tough time remedying this. The space has at least opened up for alternative ways of thinking about global crises, mass brutalities, enemies and allies, and inequalities of power and economics. Whether such alternative visions will result in any coherent alternatives remains to be seen, but we should be neither ashamed nor embarrassed if we derive satisfaction from seeing the Bush administration collapse under the weight of its own cynicism and stupidity. We just have to keep in mind that such justified satisfaction is not enough to make the world a better place.

Those who lament that we could have done it differently, that there was a “winnable” way to invade, kill a bunch of evil people, and build a new country, are missing the point. The belief that some new kind of U.S. leaders could be elected, in the context of the present era, who could exercise military power responsibly, ethically, and competently, is at least as utopian as any of the allegedly deranged pipe-dreams of the peace movement.

One more thing: Those who continue to insist that "everyone" was wrong about Iraq's WMDs, those who continue to insist on giving Bush the benefit of the doubt, and maintaining that he was merely misled by other people's bad intelligence, need to first read and attempt to refute this fine article published by FAIR.


And this is the view of geopolitics from the ground: