Striking Terror

If we were somehow actually fighting militant Islamic bogeymen in Iraq with our occupying army, I'd probably say, "Go to it, boys; I'm with you all the way." If Iraq had been a home base for terrorist plotters, I could see the sense in this senseless enterprise which is neither full-scale war nor legitimate nation-building, since there is very little direct engagement with anything resembling a military force, and we have pointedly stepped aside from Iraq's political arena.

I'm not the first to point out that Iraq, rather than being a terrorist breeding ground, was, in fact, one of the few countries in the region that refused to truck with Muslim fanatics and had the wherewithal to keep them at bay. It's safe to say that Iraq had fewer al-Qaeda operatives at work within its borders than--take your pick--New York, New Jersey, California, or Florida.

As the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld triumvirate continues asserting that U.S. operations in Iraq are on a crucial mission to fight international terrorism, I'm thinking, "How clueless and short-sighted do you think we Americans are?" We aren't fighting terrorists there; we are their greatest, most effective supporters and enablers.

There WERE no terrorists in this location until we drew them in and gave them the biggest, juiciest targets they could possibly have ever imagined. They don't even have to fake passports, kill time in sleeper cells, or spend their lightly-laundered money on flight schools. They just drift over unguarded borders into welcoming neighborhoods and bingo! There's more defenseless targets than they can count. Imagine how difficult things would have been for these zealots after 9/11 if Bush hadn't worked so diligently to spin world sympathies around 180 degrees and make the U.S. the most hated nation again, and then bait the trap with 150,000 pieces of cheese.

If there were something akin--but antithetical to--the Nobel Peace Prize that Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat shared in 1978, it would be an Anti-Peace Prize shared by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and George W. Bush. Neither could do it alone, but together--why, they're dynamite. Literally.

So, now we're supposed to believe that Bushy has a "Plan for Victory." Of course, the plan is to keep on doing what we've been doing so successfully until. . .well, that's exactly what's not in the plan. Bush says we'll leave when the Iraqi security forces are ready to take over. And when will that be? The military brass are quick to explain that the Iraqis will be ready to take over by the time we leave. Exactly! Set your clock by it.

The misadventure of the Iraq invasion is a catastrophe of untold proportions and uncountable dimensions. Not only did the neo-con cabal distort intelligence so badly to "confirm" the existence of non-existent weaponry that our nation is smeared permanently with egg on its face, but in doing so they have undermined the effectiveness of our own intelligence gathering forces for perhaps decades, and tarnished the reputation of an extraordinary ex-soldier serving as an extraordinary diplomat. This same crew of Keystone Cowards have sent over 2,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians to their graves for the big lie (repeat it often enough and people believe it without proof) that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were in cahoots.

This war on terrorism has so consumed us that we are expected willingly to trade liberty for security and look the other way as our leaders institutionalize torture and then lie straightfaced to us and the world to deny it.

I have to admit, I'm thoroughly terrified.