Those who supported the war because of Bush and Blair's lies now cast themselves as victims. This won't help Iraq's dead and dying
Naomi Klein
Friday February 20, 2004
The Guardian
It was Mary Vargas, a 44-year-old engineer in Renton, Washington, who carried US therapy culture to its new zenith. Explaining why the war in Iraq was no longer her top election issue, she told Salon, the online magazine, that "when they didn't find the weapons of mass destruction, I felt I could also focus on other things. I got validated".
Yes, that's right: war opposition as self-help. The end-goal is not to seek justice for the victims, or punishment for the aggressors, but rather "validation" for one's position. Once validated, one can reach for the talisman of self-help: "closure". In Britain, it's Blair who adopted the language of self-help: validated by the Hutton whitewash, he is urging the nation to "draw a line" and "move on".
In the US, it's the Democrats who have the therapy market cornered.
SNIP
Why does this history matter? Because so long as Bush's opponents cast themselves as the primary victims of his war, the real victims will remain invisible. The focus will be on uncovering Bush and Blair's lies - a process geared towards absolving those who believed them, not on compensating those who died because of them.
In the five stages of grieving, there is a step that comes after anger. It's guilt, when the grieving party starts to wonder whether they did enough, if the loss was somehow their fault, how they can make amends. Moving on - the final stage - is supposed to come after that reckoning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1152089,00.html