Reply #1: Some thoughts on "the Bush Era" [View All]

[joemurphy]

This is part of my take on the “Bush Era”. I originally put it up in response to a Tom Friedman article on which someone invited comment:

Tom Friedman lost me when he joined the Bush bandwagon and came out in favor of an invasion of Iraq. Prior to that time I thought he was fairly knowledgeable about the Middle East. But in choosing to back Bush's plan for military action against Iraq he hitched his wagon to the Neocon pipedream that somehow the Middle East could be remade by the United States into a group of shining new democracies -- a sort of Islamic Europe with lots of representative republics, responsive to the collective will of their people, and pacific in their purpose and intent. The Iraq intervention would have the twin results of repressing terrorism and solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That, in turn, was going to bring an era of peace to the Middle East.

Friedman's endorsement of the Iraq War came in a column in which he said that we "had to do something" to answer the 911 attacks. In espousing mindless action, he was well-aware of the fact that there was no real link between Iraq and 911. Friedman, however, by his own admission, didn't care. Conditions had come to the point where America had to show somebody, somewhere in the Middle East, that it was no nation to be trifled with. Iraq, said Friedman, was as good a place as any to do that.

Friedman’s "we have to do something" and "we can democratize the Middle East" ideas were departures from both his past journalism and from the realpolitik that he and his Neocon friends had previously paid lip service. Both ideas have since proven disastrous to Iraq and to the United States. Terrorism, the root cause of our intervention, is now worse than ever and, instead of becoming truly democratic, Iraq has devolved into a chaos of sectarian violence, armed militias, daily bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, and blatant war-profiteering. It is increasingly clear that we cannot bring stability to Iraq. Indeed, our presence there is exacerbating Iraq’s inherent instability.

A repressed and desperate country under Saddam, Iraq now may not even be a country at all. Its public services are a shambles and its people are in most ways more cowed and financially destitute than they were under their former dictator. Since the war, Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions have widened. Public safety is non-existent in most urban areas. Oil revenues have dried up and pipelines are repeatedly cut by a hydra-headed armed insurgency that an undermanned and ill-equipped American military has proven unable to control. There is less electricity and oil produced in Iraq now than there was under Saddam, as its electrical power grids and pipelines are routinely sabotaged. The Iraqi people themselves are desperate for jobs and security and neither are in the foreseeable offing. Reconstruction has been stymied by graft, profiteering, and the ongoing violence.
Nor do the portents for Iraq’s long-term future appear bright. Those portents include an inevitable American pullout that will probably be sooner than later, violent civil war, and ultimately some kind of partition along ethic and religious lines. Meanwhile, as the U.S. fights to keep a lid on everything, Iraq’s Shiis move closer to their coreligionists in Iran, its Sunnis grow increasingly angry, wary, and alienated, and the Kurds move to consolidate their position in anticipation of gaining the oil fields around Kirkuk and the political independence which have always been their true aim. Private militias encompassing all factions are now arming themselves for the anticipated combat to come. Foreign jihadists continue to pour in, exploiting these internal divisions and serving to further destabilize the country. Suffice it to say that in Iraq we now have something akin to a present Somalia, a former Lebanon or a pre-Taliban Afghanistan in the making – a questionable nation being torn apart by a total breakdown in public order that seems to be increasingly moving toward faction, warlordism, and militia rule.

Our always somewhat fictitious "coalition of the willing" has now completely fallen apart. The Poles, Italians, and Spaniards have rightly seen the current situation as hopeless and have either pulled out or are in the process of doing so. Our only real ally, Great Britain, we now learn, has formulated plans to follow them.

For the American people, the Iraq war has meant a huge national debt, thousands of soldiers killed or maimed for life, and a democracy that has countenanced the torture of Abu Ghraib, the indefinite internment of minors at Guantanamo, and a weakened National Guard that, as the aftermath of Katrina has shown, is also needed at home. Our domestic immigration policy has become increasingly xenophobic and discriminatory against people of Islamic belief. Jingoism is now routinely used for political and ideological ends. We now debate laws in the halls of Congress that tolerate the examination of library records and the search of homes without the knowledge of the affected citizenry. It is now feasible to imprison American citizens and hold them incommunicado based solely on "enemy combatant" designations, without access to lawyers or to due process of law. The government uses ridiculous color-codes, unfounded rumor, and alarming news reports to ratchet up fear instead of quieting it. We now have our bags searched before taking subway rides, entering public buildings, or attending sporting events. We have to remove our shoes to ride airplanes. Security guards are everywhere. Metal detectors and pat-downs are now a public norm. And for all the billions spent, a hurricane has shown that we can’t even manage the anticipated threats from natural calamities and raised doubts about our ability to cope with a surprise attack from terrorists.

Meanwhile, our vaunted all-volunteer army has been debilitated by a war without aims or exit strategy. Without a draft, manning it has become problematic. Forty year olds are now encouraged to enlist as buck privates and high schools are complaining of cajoling from recruiters and their ability to influence impressionable youths. Our people have been coarsened and inured to an erosion of their ideals and their financial well-being. Worst of all, none of this seems to be getting any better. Owing to a near absence of meaningful leadership, there appears to be no clear path out of our present malaise. Most Americans I know are not sanguine about the future.

Men like Tom Friedman, the cheerleaders for our intervention in Iraq, have proven to be failed visionaries. In view of their past errors of judgment, they no longer merit being listened to. Personally, I no longer care what Tom Friedman has to say about Iraq or about anything else. To me he has become worse than irrelevant. He has become a cipher. To hell with him, and to hell with the others like him – those that are responsible for all this.