The Gulf War: How Did We Get Here?
How did we get here? It was just over two years ago that America was headed in the right direction. The stock market was sky high. Unemployment was at historic lows. There was nothing on the horizon but peace and prosperity.
Enter George W. Bush. A foreign policy lightweight, Bush sued his way into office with a simple agenda: Redistribute to his rich friends the money that Social Security taxpayers had set aside for themselves, chip away at any and all defenses that poor and middle class people have against Big Business, and take a lot of naps.
So along comes 9/11. Some bad folks, mostly from Saudi Arabia (not Iraq, in case anybody cares any more) execute a very successful terrorist plot and hurt a lot of Americans. We react in different ways. While decent Americans considered the following notions:
How could this happen?
What would make these people so angry that they would invest this amount of time and effort to hurt Americans?
How can we prevent this from happening again?Bush and his band of chicken hawks mulled over these thoughts:
We're really mad! We have to kill somebody!
We have to strike back or we'll look weak!And later,
What can we do to avoid becoming "The Administration that Couldn't Find bin Laden"?
Of course, the problem with the administration's first two thoughts, apart from the fact that most Americans set them aside when they reached puberty, is that those directly responsible were already dead. Although death penalty fans should have been satisfied with this outcome (after all, if the perpetrators died, then justice must have been served), the macho studs in the White House weren't going to be satisfied with merely arresting co-conspirators. Besides, the inability of the world's most powerful nation to track down a guy with a serious kidney ailment was starting to make Bush look foolish. Then an idea surfaced that would satisfy all three of Bush's needs: If Bush couldn't kill those directly responsible and can't find Osama, maybe America would be satisfied with killing a whole bunch of people who weren't involved in 9/11, but look a lot like those who were.
I know! How about going after Iraq? Everybody still hates Saddam Hussein from the first Gulf War, right? He's perfect! The despotic leader of a weakened nation, he already has good (I mean, bad) name recognition with Americans. What better way to take America's mind off of Bush's failure to find bin Laden than create a crisis with a bad guy we can find and kick his ass instead? And did I mention there was a bit of oil in his country?
There couldn' t be a better solution to Bush's problems. But how does the Bush admistration sell this scheme to Americans and to the world? The answer to that, my friends, is simple. We don't bother. Tell the world that America just can't sleep at night knowing that Iraq may still possess some of the terrible chemical and biological agents we sold them during the Reagan administration. Tell the world that we must have regime change in Iraq, and unlike the 2000 U.S. presidential election, the Supreme Court won't intervene. All the while, cook up an invasion plan, start the wheels in motion, and accuse anybody who opposes it of being un-American or irrelevant, whichever is more insulting. After all, once the world gets a look at the pretty lights over the night sky in downtown Baghdad, they'll forget all about those nagging little questions. Questions like these: If we have no quarrel with the Iraqi people, why is it that we are killing the Iraqi people by the thousands? How is killing a bunch of Iraqi soldiers and civilians in front of the entire Arab world supposed to make Arabs hate us less? How is removing a regime that is not affiliated with al Qaida supposed to weaken al Qaida? How is seizing "The Iraqi people's oil fields" and handing them over to the international oil industry going to convince the world that the war isn't about oil? Finally, how will America ever recover from the unprecedented crime of unilaterally and unjustifiably attacking a much weaker nation against the wishes of the Middle East, the United Nations, and the world community? But, hey, who has time to ponder these little details when CNN is showing real-time explosions?
Oooooooh! Aaaaaaaah!
There you have it. The winners in this disaster: George W. Bush, Big Oil, CNN, and the idiots in this country who love reality television. The losers: Thousands of Americans and Iraqis who died or sustained injuries; everyone on both sides who lost loved ones; every single member of the military who was forced to leave their families; every American citizen who pays taxes, plans to travel overseas or collect Social Security someday; the United Nations, NATO, and the world economy; and those Americans who will die in the next horrendous terrorist attack in retribution for Operation Exxon Profits.
Boy, the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years sure seem like a distant dream now . . .
4/06/03
