whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

"What Have We Done?"

August 05, 2005
As the blood of US soldiers continues to drain into the hot sands of Iraq over the last several days with at least 27 US soldiers killed and the approval rating for his handling of the debacle in Iraq dropping to an all-time low of 38%, Mr. Bush commented from the comforts of his ranch in Crawford, Texas today, “We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq.”

Just a two hour drive away in Dallas, at the Veterans for Peace National Convention in Dallas, I’m sitting with a roomful of veterans from the current quagmire.

When asked what he would say to Mr. Bush if he had the chance to speak to him, Abdul Henderson, a corporal in the Marines who served in Iraq from March until May, 2003, took a deep breath and said, “It would be two hits-me hitting him and him hitting the floor. I see this guy in the most prestigious office in the world, and this guy says ‘bring it on.’ A guy who ain’t never been shot at, never seen anyone suffering, saying ‘bring it on?’ He gets to act like a cowboy in a western movie…it’s sickening to me.”

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Big Star-Spangled Lies for War
by Norman Solomon
August 08, 2005

A lot of people want to believe that the current war on Iraq is some kind of aberration -- a radical departure from the previous baseline of U.S. foreign policy. That’s a comforting illusion.

Yes, the current administration in Washington is notable for the extreme mendacity and calculated idiocy of its claims. But -- decade after decade -- the propaganda fuel for one U.S. war after another has flowed from a standard set of lies.

Some of the boilerplate lies are implicit assumptions about Uncle Sam’s benign and even noble intent. Other deceptions rely on more specific whoppers, endlessly whirling through the news media’s spin cycle. From one war to the next, certain themes are played up more than others -- but the process always involves building an agenda to start a war, trying to justify the war while it’s underway, and then claiming that the war must continue as long as the man in the Oval Office says so.

Sometimes a war begins suddenly, filling the national horizon with a huge insistent flash. At other times, over a period of months or years, a low distant rumble gradually turns into a roar. But in any event, the democratic role of citizens is not simply to observe and obey. In the United States, what we think is supposed to matter. And for practical reasons, top officials in Washington don’t want to seem too far out of step with voters.

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