"We'll Win in Iraq if We Don't Quit"

Bush, perhaps using Karl Rove's words, recently responded to reporters' inquiries on the state of the war in Iraq by saying "we'll win if we don't quit."  This is a stroke of genius!  In a single succinct sentence, Bush is saying that the Democrats, when they begin to withdraw troops from Iraq, will be quitting and, thus, losing the war.  The Republicans have already put an item on the agenda for 2008!  Amazing political savvy, I think.  So how do we hand the probable "loss" of the war back to them in 2008?

 

Let's examine the thinking of the men who took us to war in Iraq.  What did they consider when planning the war?  First, they wanted to oust Saddam Hussein, and felt it was going to be pretty easy to do, given his reputation as a hated, murderous tyrant.  The Iraqis would buy in to his defeat.  Second, they wanted to install a "democratic" regime in Iraq that would be friendly to the U.S. and its interests.  (My readers should understand that our country makes allies, not friends.)  Third, they wanted to assure the free flow of oil from the Gulf, principally to China, a huge and quickly developing trade partner with a big need for oil.  And fourth, they wanted to be close to Iran, which was already seen as an enemy.  Given that Iraqis would like to be liberated from Saddam's rule and to develop democratic institutions to replace the Ba'athist ones, what happened?  How did we find ourselves in the middle of an insurrection, a civil war, a whatever?

 

The simple answer is that it took too long!  Bush and company unleashed the Leviathan and rained murder down on Iraq from the sky.  When Iraq was pounded to within an inch of its life, the Leviathan was caged and the Marines, Army, and others were dispatched to make short work of the Republican Guard, which they did.  On that fateful day when Bush announced that the war was over and we had won (don't forget that claim made from the deck of an aircraft carrier when you're arguing with your conservative colleagues), we had already lost.  Iraqis needed power and water; they needed a supply of food; they needed to be stabilized.  What happened?

 

None of the above happened because of two big things.  First, we sent too few troops, by half, to see to the infrastructure and security needs of the Iraqi people.  Had we protected the museums and the libraries, had we brought generators on line, had we delivered fresh potable water from the day we took Baghdad, Iraq would not be in this situation today.  Instead, what we chose to do was occupy Saddam's many palaces (as if this were Europe in 1945), fold our arms across our chests, and wait.  Wait for what?

 

(Second) We waited for the treasonous war profiteers like Halliburton to take over the situation.  Nobody did anything because nobody knew who was really calling the shots.  The Pentagon is both civilian and military, and the two sides rarely spoke at a level below the Secretary of Defense, and often at the White House.  To wit, the Royal American Plenipotentiary of Iraq, Mr. Paul Bremer.  The generals told the colonels to fight in Falluja and Sadr City, but not to rebuild the infrastructure.  After all, the Marines are not city planners, architects, or construction superintendents.  The war profiteers and the civil administrator, who ostensibly hire and deploy such people, did not do so, but did manage to negotiate lucrative military food contracts charging Marines a mere $10.00 a meal!  The cooks were paid more than the Marines, by a long shot, but these paragons of industry have absolutely no shame.  These capitalist potentates even gave the soldiers the dirty and dangerous job of driving unshielded fuel trucks around Iraq to deliver gas wherever it was needed.

 

We could have salvaged a bad situation simply by being honest with ourselves.  You don't drop bombs on people for weeks then defeat their army on the ground, only to make them suffer for two more years without power, fuel, food, education, and neighborhood stability.  The Administration was incredibly stupid about this war.  It wasn't that they did not understand that after the war would come a period that demanded immediate attention.  They understood it.  What they didn't understand is what that would look like.

 

These guys are former cold warriors.  For them, there's a group who's for you, and a group who's against you.  The South Vietnamese are for us and the North Vietnamese are against us.  The South Koreans are for us and the North Koreans are against us.  When they looked at Iraq, they looked at it this way.  They said "the Saddam loyalists in the Ba'ath Party, and some of the Sunnis will be against us, and the Shi'ahs, the Kurds, and the Marsh Arabs will all be for us."  Don't you wish life were that simple!

 

That's what things looked like for about an hour and a half; then everything changed.  The Shi'ahs, after waiting to see what would happen under American occupation and seeing no quick progress, armed themselves.  So would you!  You have been living under a savage dictator who has killed your people by every known means including poison gas, and you heard more than a decade ago that these self same Americans would defend you if you rose up against Saddam and when you did, they failed to do so and left you hanging in the wind.  Oh, yeah, you're gonna grab some guns, and you're going to be much more careful about what you believe when you hear people say things.

 

The Sunnis were actually the only ones who played the game perfectly.  They were angry at their loss of power, were sure they were going to be disenfranchised from the new government, whenever it came about, and could only look forward to being a powerless minority with no access to oil.  Of course, they grabbed guns!  The Kurds are sitting on the sidelines, having no particular interest in Baghdad, and the Marsh Arabs have been all but eradicated by the Ba'athists.  The Shi'ahs are the sticking point.

 

Two men can pray together as Shi'i, but not speak together because they don't share a common language, and they might hold suspicions because one ethnic group is like "this" and another is like "that", and so on.  This is the case with Arabs and Persians. Having had the privilege of living for extended periods in both Arab and Persian cultures, I can tell you that language, food, customs, ethnicity, and attitudes are different.  So this a priori linkage between Iranian Shi'ites and Iraqi ones is less a linkage than it appears to be.  Our government did not, and still does not, understand this.  They also don't understand that the Persians may look just like the Taliban, but they hate them, and are only like them when judged by the ignorant.  We need not believe we are at war with Shi'ah Islam because it is not true.  And we need not believe that Iran will have a deeply personal and brotherly relationship with Iraq in the years ahead because it will not.

 

The point here is that the Administration lost this war the day they bombed Iraq.  They lost the war because they knew nothing about anything important to Iraqis, were not sufficiently interested in providing the minimum daily needs to this defeated people, and lacked any capitalist initiative to move quickly, allowing the small infections to fester and grow into real problems.  When the American people told them their policy was wrong and changed the complexion of the Congress, the Bush regime simply turned the world on its head—as they have done so often—and said that the war will be won unless we quit.  They are liars with mouths full of the clotted blood of dead soldiers.  They are the real vampires who suck out the life of an inherently compassionate and charitable American people—a people who make war reluctantly unless manipulated.

Kicking Bush is a Big Mistake

Let's resist the urge to nail Bush and Cheney to a tree!  I know you're pissed off, and that the SOB's deserve it, but how bad do you wanna see the more liberal party take the White House and hold the Congress in 2008?  Remember what I said about President Puppy?  Well I haven't yet changed my mind.  He's seen as "lame" without his rubber-stamp congress, so every shot we take at him will be remembered by those who simply voted for Dems to see if they were any different than the ones currently in office.  It's a two year trial period in which you are to decide which product is better.  You know, buy now and no payments until November, 2008!  Just remember that payday is coming.

 

I wouldn't mention it except that an old friend who I greatly admire sent me an email advocating the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney.  I told her they both almost screamed out to be impeached, but that it would be a bad political decision to do so.  I mean you can beat the living shit out of Dick Cheney and even the most compassionate American might smirk, but that's definitely not true of Bush.  People like our bumbling, hapless, oh-so-inadequate, coke-sniffing, god-fearing, anonymous alcoholic President.

 

Look, if they hold Bill Clinton up in our faces next time around, all we have to do is say that the Republicans impeached him for a sexual scandal, but the Democrats didn't impeach Bush even as he sent thousands to their deaths based on a lie.  Goddamn I wish somebody at the top of the Party would let me draft the responses to those f***ing white, child molestin', kiddie porn readin' (and YES, god-fearin') conservatives' attacks!  I'm Karl Rove in a white hat!

 

A Mindless Digression...In 1978, I was back from Iran two years already and Pittsburgh city elections were approaching.  I figured that I'd be perfect for Ayatollah of Pittsburgh, a new city line office I was creating.  But before I could run, Ayatollah Khomeini took control of Iran's revolutionary government, our embassy was seized, and I had to think twice.  I decided not to run.  I won't make that mistake again! 

 

An Even More Mindless Digression...Ted Koppel was on the radio today and he said he formed some very real ideas about what the Iranian people were feeling.  After all, he lived there for two whole weeks (another expert is born).  I'm dying to hear his predictions.  Phil Freshman, who worked with me in Iran, wrote under his own byline at the Los Angeles Times.  Where's Freshman?  Why Koppel?  I doubt if Koppel could have been predictive of the Democratic sweep of Congress, let alone the intricacies of Iranian politics.  Anyway, Im ending these digressions.

 

To impeach Bush would be a big mistake.  It's like kicking a man when he's down, and Americans don't like that (if they like the guy getting kicked).  People like Bush, ergo, q.e.d., ad hoc, and post-coital.

What Democrats Should Do Now

So, the democrats won a big victory on election day.  I wrote to Rep. Ellen Tauscher, our local representative and said three things to her, besides congratulations.

 

First, I said we should go easy on Bush and avoid any nasty language and muckraking because he's "alone" now without his Congress.  Lots of people like the fellow like a puppy, and you can get people real furious by abusing President Puppy.

 

Second, I said we should not rise to any bait regarding quasi-religious issues like gay marriage, which is only a set of words that forces liberals to declare their inherent humanity.  Live your humanity, don't declare it.  Don't be like the religious right and make everything a confession.  If there's a real fight, then fight, but don't be baited.  The republicans got where they were because they talked big.  We know that the whole damn party is ruled by people who would run from a real fight.  (REALLY!  Can you imagine Cheney or the rest of them doing anything but slapping someone!  Eeewww!)

 

Third, I said we should reduce the US forces in Iraq, but send the professional soldiers, not the reservists, to Afghanistan to continue the fight against Osama and the Taliban, and to provide the assistance we really need to provide to the new government.

 

It is my opinion that if we can do these few things effectively, we will have a democrat in the Oval Orifice come January, 2009.

We All Got Issues

Bad things been happening lately
looks like I'm gonna fall from stately to bleak
have a peek
I don't seek it but it finds me anyway
as night turns into day
I'm too fucking old to pray
gotta say god ain't so strong
the world don't know right from wrong.
I'm strong, not a joke, not just smoke
but real, cause I feel the ice cold steel
of my words, in case you ain't heard
the team's doing bad but I ain't broke yet
still got the credit card debt
can board the jet and find my way
if only to say hey boy
I can still play much to their dismay
no matter how gray my sky I'm still a winner
just thinner
thread bare
don't care
only got one chair in my place
but face the fact that I only got one ass
to put down in it, so skin it.
Bling ain't everything but it bring things
people smile and sing, but bees sting too
so it don't make everything shiny
small still tiny, baby's still whiny
no matter how big the ring
except Milagros will do her thing
cause you provide the capital for her bling.

Bling is slavery
totally unsavory
not the true fruit of labor
but the way to get another man
to do the things you yourself can but you
too lazy, too cool, too crazy
just a fool living by some rule
the rich man's tool
when the time comes to smile and dance
his hand in your pants
sweat on your brow wondering how
he did it, yes he did!
and you never seen it coming but
you want your grandson raised in the Tenderloin?

Make your deal
show some zeal
leave your shed
like uncle jed "Beverly is the place you wanna be"
but don't blame nobody
when the brothers call you whitey and whitey calls you bro
cause you're a pro,
a man on the go
living fast,
praying it lasts,
living biggah than the next niggah
(that fool don't know nothing)
How about you?