Happy Imbeciles At War
Massive U.S. military buildup, billions of dollars, a useless enemy,
and no one seems to know why
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
<http://sfgate.com/templates/types/gatemainpages/images/clear.gif>
Friday, January 10, 2003 [Click to View]
This is not a war. Iraq will not be a war. Do we understand this? We
do not seem to understand this. This is heavily corporatized power
brokers killing each other for oil and capital. Oh yes it is.
Let's be perfectly clear. You cannot have a war when the so-called
enemy has done nothing to provoke you and is absolutely no threat to
your national safety and has no significant military force and has
negligible chance of even setting off a firecracker near your own
overwhelming death machines, and whose only weapons of minimal
destruction are the rusty short-range warheads and biochemical agents
we sold him 20 years ago, and kept selling to him, even after we knew
he was gassing his own people.
You cannot have a war when there is nothing to fight against, when
it's essentially going to be a huge U.S. military stomping/bombing
exercise, when, just like Afghanistan, we stand to suffer zero U.S.
casualties (except for those we seem to kill ourselves), and we just
bomb and bomb and kill and kill and shrug.
Let us look closer: The U.S. buildup for war with Iraq is the biggest
in decades. The Iraq operation, in the words of Lt. Gen. Thomas
McInerney, will be "the most massive precision air campaign in
history," because, well, because we can. Because we want to
annihilate everything as fast and ruthlessly as possible, simply
because the longer such an operation takes and the more expensive and
obviously pointless it becomes, the more everyday citizens snap out
of it and begin to say, wait, why are we doing this again?
Saddam's meager military, let us be reminded, is a tiny quivering
fraction of what it was 10 years ago during Desert Storm, and even
then it took U.S. forces less than four days to almost completely
annihilate it.
Now it's even weaker, due to ongoing sanctions and U.N. oversight and
a decade of continuous U.S.-led bombing raids on Iraqi targets you
never read about. Hell, this time we should have those thousands of
pesky Iraqi soldiers and innocent civilians dead and slaughtered in a
weekend.
This is a Mack truck versus a Pinto. This is an F-16 versus a paper
airplane, a Tomahawk missile versus a spit wad. There is no contest.
"War" is exactly the wrong term. The U.S. attack on Iraq will be, of
course, a massacre. Go team.
Now let's say you sense this all to be true. Let's say you have a
queasy feeling deep in your gut as you realize no one is talking
about exactly why we need to launch a second simultaneous war to go
along with the unwinnable assault we're still running in Afghanistan.
Remember Afghanistan? Yes, we're still there, warring away. Bombing
and attacking and killing. Haven't caught a single al Qaeda leader of
note yet. That looks bad for Dubya. Killed a few thousand civilians
though. Shrug.
So, let's boil it down: Why go to war with Iraq? Can't find Osama, is
one reason. That looks bad. Really, really want to steal all that
delicious oil for ShrubCo, is another. Saddam is clearly a very bad
guy who kills his own people and snickers in America's general
direction, is a third. But then again, so are at least a half-dozen
other vile tyrants of the world. Volatile, nuke-ready North Korea?
Let's open some talks. Feeble, oil-ready Iraq? Let's massacre. Hmm.
Perhaps you wonder why no one is asking any of these questions,
making similar points.
Perhaps you wonder just where in the hell is the spineless major
media in all this, as they watch the chicken-hawk Shrubster himself,
between golf swings, announce how tens of thousands of American
troops are being sent to the Gulf alongside an enormous
billion-dollar military buildup and imminent gobs of heaping death
raining down upon a paltry oppressed nation and coming up next on
CNN, we interview that dumb guy from "Joe Millionaire." Perfect.
Perhaps you wonder where is the national TV coverage of all those
huge anti-war protests, hundreds of thousands of people, all over the
world, from Spain to Berlin to New York to San Francisco.
Perhaps you wonder where are all the "serious" journalists, the
risk-taking news agencies pointing up the absurdity of it all, the
imminent horror, the outrage. Could it be these news agencies are
owned by major conservative corporations? Could it be they're all
terrified of losing ratings, of saying something unpopular, of
invoking Cheney's wrath, of losing advertiser dollars and that
ever-precious, ever-dwindling dumbed-down audience? One guess.
And besides, who needs a reason for a massacre anymore? This is the
age of the preemptive-strike, screw-you Bush regime. Who needs, for
example, the Monroe Doctrine, that crusty old rag stating how America
will go to war only as a last resort, as a defensive measure, and
won't become embroiled in unwinnable foreign wars that are none of
our business?
Who needs every precedent ever set by international law? Who needs
the U.N. Charter? Who needs confused congressional approval? Who
needs ethical integrity?
Screw it all, says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his black eyes
gleaming like the devil's own golf balls. Let us become an
ever-more-hated rogue nation, attack whomever we want, whenever we
want, with no international support and much international disgust.
Let us squander, childishly, within months, the generous and
compassionate goodwill afforded our country by our international
allies in the wake of 9/11.
Let us wantonly kill innocent civilians and children and thousands of
Iraqi soldiers who, let us repeat, did nothing to provoke us. Shall
we? Yes let's. Why? Shhh.
Let us be clear. Saddam is not a threat to the U.S., and never has
been. He is merely yet another cowardly and murderous thug, much like
the countless other despots and autocrats, from Marcos to King Fahd
to Ariel Sharon, the U.S. has added to its payroll when it served our
needs, and whom we then backhand when we need economic stimulus, or
when the president needs a boost to his approval ratings, or when the
corporate pals of the Bush WASP mafia need more billion-dollar
petrochemical and defense contracts. Aha. Perhaps this is why.
We are, in short, going to attack and massacre Iraq for the oil
reserves, to protect America's corporate interests, to feed the
gaping maw of the military-industrial complex. Same as it ever was.
But let us be perfectly clear: We are most definitely not cranking up
the appalling war machine for your sake, or for the country's
protection, or for our commendable standing among our humanitarian
allies.
We are not doing it to defeat terrorism (it will have the exact
opposite effect), or to make the streets safer for our children, or
because they've found big scary WMDs (they haven't -- not a one ) --
or even for Iraq's own good. And to believe we are is, quite simply,
to be wholly misinformed and openly, flagrantly, deliberately
deceived.
Do we understand this? We must, we absolutely must, try and understand this.
--
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Drop Bush, Not Bombs!
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"During times of universal deceit,
telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
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