President's March 21, 2006 stated intention that ‘future Presidents' will determine whether there are American troops in Iraq. At that press conference the president answered a question about when would the day come when there are no more troops in Iraq and his answer was:
That, of course, is an objective, and that will be decided by future Presidents and future governments of Iraq.So, make no mistake about it. Bush-Cheney-Rove have a cut and run plan. Only it starts with a run:
Running out the course of the war until 2008, running through more thousands of lives and billions of dollars.That's the long-term plan.
Cutting out (of office) in 2009, leaving the whole Mess-o-Potania to a Hillary Clinton (the only Democrat likely to want it).
Running in 2012 on the platform of "Who Lost Iraq?".
But there is another, more immediate, reason why Bush and his Neocon war-party feel the need to stay the course. If authentic Congressional oversight is empowered by this year's mid-term elections all kinds of hell could break out, occasioned by the hellacious thirst for truth: truth about the intelligence being fixed to market the war; truth about rendition and torture and who ordered it; truth about high tech domestic surveillance; truth about treason of outing intelligence officers for political reasons; maybe even truth about 9-11 itself.
It turns out that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld have to stay the course to prevent the truth from "coming out". These three chickenhawks are confronted with the necessity of sending more young Americans to their death, and delivering more debt to unborn Americans, because if the wheels come off of their Mess-o-Potanian amusement park, they may not escape with their hides.
As a post mentioned in the foregoing discussion, Post-World War II's Nuremberg court found that
To initiate a war of aggression is ... the supreme international crime.A second lesson drawn from Nuremberg is that when it comes to war crimes, the winners of wars always get to prosecute the losers. So, as long as Bush and Cheney and Rove can lead the American people on about light being at the end of the tunnel, (just around the next bend), they can hope to delay the day of reckoning. Even a Neocon, Max Boot, admits, Win Baghdad and we'll forgive Haditha!
.... What matters most to most folks back home is whether their "boys" are fighting for a just cause and whether they are winning. If the answer to both questions is yes, the public will forgive a great deal of misconduct. Thus, celebrated war-crimes cases did not prevent American victory in the Philippines or British victory in South Africa. Nor was the My Lai massacre a turning point in the Vietnam War. By the time it was exposed in late 1969, support for the war was already in freefall because victory did not appear to be in sight.Do not, gentle reader, ask for what noble cause we fight; we fight on only for the ignoble purpose of saving some miserable and guilt-infested political skins.
Today, Americans' (and Iraqis') verdict on the war will not turn on what happened in Abu Ghraib or Haditha. More important is what is happening in Ramadi and Baghdad — major cities where the security situation has deteriorated over the last year. The Bush administration can weather the excesses of some soldiers; it cannot survive the perception that we are losing. Instead of indulging in excessive self-flagellation, therefore, the Pentagon and the White House would be well advised to take decisive steps, such as sending more troops, to restore law and order.
Victory diminishes the significance of war crimes; defeat magnifies them into defining events.
I'm not thinking at this point that I have anything to add.
ReplyDelete" we fight on only for the ignoble purpose of saving some miserable and guilt-infested political skins."
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean we're fighting on to establish the(ir) devine right to preventive war, too.?
Great article from Alternet: "Cut-and-Run Liberal, and Proud of It." Amen
ReplyDelete***
"I admit it. We are cut-and-run liberals, just as Karl Rove alleges. More than that, I am proud of it and encourage more Americans to join us.
"We are liberals/progressives and, damn it, we want to cut and run."
Yeah, Stella, and here are the money paras from the Alternet article you linked:
ReplyDeleteDo we want to cut and run from Iraq? I wish the hell we could. But that fat is already in the fire. Liberals understand we can't cut and run from Iraq. But whose fault is it that we're stuck there now? Not ours, that's for sure. We would like to see U.S. troops leave Iraq as soon as possible -- but not in a way that would make matters worse for ordinary Iraqis than our invasion already has.
In the meantime, we are not about to let the very neocons who got us into that mess shift the blame onto liberals who oppose the war. You guys started it, and that dead chicken is hanging around your necks, not ours. So, Karl, stop the blame-shifting and wear it like a man.
Thanks, v. I had to refrain from clogging up your comments section by posting the entire article.
ReplyDeleteThat's Rove all over: pointing the blame at everyone but himself. Author Stephen Pizzo did a great job undermining Rove's "cut and run" allegations against liberals and progressives.