== Iraq, deep in your bones = By Mark Morford

[madokie]

A war that isn't really a war, the great humiliation that's ours forever. Is there any upside?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/09/14/notes091407.DTL&nl=fix

We are, of course, mostly fighting against ourselves.

It must be repeated every so often, just as a painful, necessary, ego-tweaking reminder: Iraq was never a war. Not really, not in any sense that mattered or that we could actually define and understand or to which we could truly submit ourselves or our national identity.

It never mattered how many little American flags appeared on how many bloated Chevy Avalanches, how many right-wing radio shows found a new reason to pule, how many furiously blindered uber-patriots happily ignored all the harsh words from all those naysaying generals or even all the "turncoat" anti-war Republicans and insisted we're really over there to fight some sort of great Islamic demon no one can actually see or locate or define but that we must, somehow, attempt to destroy -- even though doing so only seems to make the situation far, far worse.

There was never any coherent, justifiable heroic cause. Indeed, the truth about Iraq, as evidenced by Gen. David Petreaus' muted, bleak testimony before Congress just this week, is much more simple, nefarious, pathetic. Iraq is, was, and forever will be our very own massive strategic blunder, a failed land grab for position and power in a tinderbox region defined by furious instability and corruption and death. ...

[OneBlueSky]

1. Iraq . . . a crime then, a crime now, a crime as long as we remain there . . .

what Congress is funding is an ongoing criminal enterprise already responsible for the death or maiming of over 30,000 Americans of over a million Iraqis . . . not to mention the several million refugees it has created . . . and the hundreds of billions of dollars it has cost us . . . and the destruction that it has rained down on that sovereign nation . . . and the prestige and friendship it has cost us throughout the world . . .

[madokie]

2. and yet our congress critters has no will to stop it

won't even lift a finger in that regard, so sad

[lyonn]

6. Great rant, your words?

Simply put and sadly true, it's a crime.

[madokie]

3. self kick just in case someone missed Mark this morning

peace

[sinkingfeeling]

4. I certainly hope that he's right. That this will truly be the death of RW ideology.

"Because truly, many in the alternative set, the lightworkers and the gurus and the healers and the deep teachers, those who think outside the war room and beyond the bland academic platitudes, these people tend see Iraq, BushCo, the American right and all the sanctimonious bleakness surrounding them as merely the inky remnants of a passing disease, the last, vicious gasp of a dying ideology, the violent struggle of resistance that always erupts before any great cosmic shift.

Which is to say: The screeching of the Christian right, the shrill alarmism from cultural conservatives regarding everything from sex and drugs and music to gays and nipples and creationism, the rejection of science, the attacks on women's rights, the abuse of the environment, all the way up to the bleakest and ugliest manisfestation of all, a brutal and unwinnable war -- taken as a whole, these can, if you so choose, be seen as merely the embers of a hugely failed -- and yes, nearly extinct -- worldview."

[lyonn]

7. This is one of the best articles yet..

Another goody:

"Are we really this violently paranoid bully, this rogue pre-emptive screw-em-all ideological war machine defined by the dystopian Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld vision of permanent, ongoing global conflict?"
---------

Another goody:

"Because the truth is, we are well past the point of salvaging anything noble or honest from Bush's massive, historic debacle. We have only this brutal reality: Iraq is, and forever will be, one of the most extraordinary wastes in all of American history."

[NJmaverick]

5. MUST READ STUFF!!!

This should be read by every American!