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Is there anyone outside the White House who still thinks that invading Iraq was a good idea? Is there still someone who thinks that Iraq was sitting on a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction? Is there anyone at all who seriously thinks that Saddam was somehow involved in 9/11? Just for the record, he wasn't, they weren't, and it was most definitely not. I had conversations...polite arguments, really...with a few people before the invasion. I wish there was a way of asking them, "What do you think now?" without it sounding like "I told you so." Because, apart from some lingering anger over the whole travesty, I really do want to know. As Iraq erupts in chaos, as it festers in what is shaping up to be long-term, constant civil war, I want to know. I want to try and understand the psychology of someone who was absolutely convinced that it was invade Iraq or die, now that it's widely apparent that Saddam posed no threat whatsoever and had nothing to do with 9/11. And now that the man is dead. Whoopee. We won. That'll teach 'em. Yeah. The victory (if you can stoop to calling it that) is hollow, isn't it? No glory, no white-hot fury of wrath. Just a man in a plain suit, shuffled off into a hidden chamber, hanged like so many before. Yes, many of whom he sent to die. But what has his death accomplished? Nothing. Well, it accomplished on thing...you can add Saddam to the long list of casualties from the invasion of Iraq. Over 3,000 soldiers, just from the invading (sorry, liberating) armies, mostly the U.S. How many Iraqi civilian casualties? Unknown, since the Pentagon instructed the troops to stop reporting that number. It's well over 20,000...even an armchair mortician could add that up. How many lives will it take to pay for the 3,000 some lost on 9/11? How much blood will satisfy that blood? Because the U.S. and allies have already lost as many people in Iraq as died in the World Trade Center. Even if the lives of the Iraqi people mean nothing to the Pentagon, even without counting them, they're already doubling the number dead. How does killing more people pay for the loss of those lives? No matter that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11; the U.S. had been attacked, it was afraid and hurt and angry and needed to mount a huge operation to prove to the world (and itself) that it was still strong. So George W. Bush felt justified killing Iraqi people for murders they didn't commit. There is no paying for the lives lost on 9/11 - they were precious, priceless, irreplaceable. And so were the lives already lost in this futile conflict, and the lives that will undoubtedly be lost in the days, weeks, months...years to come. Lost in this civil war that doesn't exist even as the body count rises. Faced with the enormity of the situation, the stone cold reality that must penetrate into even George W. Bush's protective Pollyanna bubble, faced with the constant violence, with fresh casualties every day and no stability in sight (much less anything resembling progress), faced with a nation thrown into chaos in which the most likely outcome is a strongman dictator and a dozen more generations of angry fundamentalists, faced with widows and children weeping in one's own country and widows and children weeping on CNN...faced with all that, does anyone still think it was a good idea? It wasn't. |
