Another Reason Some Americans Can't Accept the truth of the Iraq War or Pretend not to get it.

[Mike03]

After all these years of struggling to understand how anyone--especially these five years later--could continue to uphold or believe the lie that there was a single valid reason for going to war in Iraq, I finally thought of one that had escaped me.

Yes, there's the excuse that Americans revere the office of the President too much to question that the executive office could ever lie about something as important as a war.

Then there's the justification that the executive office simply made a mistake because the "intelligence was faulty" (which of course it wasn't, but never mind the facts).

There's the excuse that no matter what reason Bush stated as our objective in Iraq, we dethroned a terrible dictator and "freed" a nation.

But it's been so hard for me to believe that after all these years, anyone with even two neurons left functioning could ever accept any of these excuses.

Then this morning I realized, If you accept the truth: That Bush and his sick regime lied us into a war that only profited a handful of greedy, horrible people while bankrupting the United States, then you have to do two things:

1. You have to admit you were a stupid fool for being fooled by all of this and, more importantly,

2. You have to get off your ass and do something. No one in his or her right mind could ever accept the truth of what has been done to us and Iraq without getting so angry that there is a moral imperative to act, and I just don't think Americans want to act anymore. Many of us (not the type of people who would be here at DU) are complacent, confused, apathetic, gullible and lazy.

So the next best thing to believing the lies is to pretend that you believe them, so that you don't have to admit what a horrible fool you've been, and how irresponsible you've been for not speaking out against the war, and for re-electing the most dangerous, most ignorant, most backwards, degenerate and deranged human being who has ever occupied the office of the Chief Executive.

So it's a way of saving face, of giving one's self permission to do absolutely nothing about the greatest crisis that has ever faced our nation. So consciously or unconsciously, there is a reluctance to accept what is so plainly obvious because, in order to do so, one would have no compelling alternative other than to act, and we are just not a society that is very good at activism anymore?

[OmahaBlueDog]

1. I think there are 2 more suppositions we are loathe to accept

1. We have repeated the mistake of Vietnam, which was to commit troops to a conflict we did not fully understand, and then remain engaged with an unclear notion of what constitutes victory.

2. We have killed 4,000 Americans for nothing (which is why, I think, many military families refuse to admit the war is wrong and should end).

[LakeSamish706]

2. Several more yet to add to the carnage....

we have killed, maimed, and made homeless millions of innocent Iraqi's
Totally destroyed there country
Made hate relations with almost every other country in the world
Continue all of the above practices.

[OmahaBlueDog]

3. Honsestly, I wish we cared as a nation about those things..

..but as a practical matter, we don't care what we've done to Iraq as a nation, and we don't care much about what other nations think of us, because many Americans either believe we're always right or don't care what we've done wrong.

[Karenina]

4. When push comes to shove

Americans, as a collective, don't really give a flying fuck as long as they are fat and happy. That is changing rapidly.

[beltanefauve]

5. That's right, its all about

comfort. The ability to buy things is the American Way. As long as there is Mc Donald's, WalMart and cable TV, most Americans don't want to venture out beyond their comfort zone. And the media reinforces this with stories of runaway brides, missing blondes and Brittany, infotainment rather than information. After all, too much information might disrupt the comfort zone.

But wait! Could it be that your average American is having trouble buying stuff these days? Could it, dare I say it, be directly tied in to the war?

Americans may only care about the kitchen-table issues. There may not be a draft, which brought Vietnam a lot closer to home for a lot more people. And the pollsters are telling us that the economy has replaced Iraq as the number-one voter concern. But the two are related. I tie them together, over and over and over again, in everyday conversation with people. If someone brings up Iraq, I bring up the economy. If someone brings up the economy, I bring up Iraq. Lather, rinse, repeat. And, in my opinion, the candidate who does the best job of tying the two together is the one who will be our next President.

[OmahaBlueDog]

6. There is the back-door draft

and it is having impacts in certain professions where reserve participation tends to be high, like fire/police/emt. People are being sent back for 2nd reserve deployments.

"If someone brings up Iraq, I bring up the economy. If someone brings up the economy, I bring up Iraq. Lather, rinse, repeat." That should be tatooed to every Dem campaign manager's wrist.

McCain is going to counter with "we must win/the surge worked/don't listen to the doom-and gloomers" and "the economy was fine before you elected those idiots into the majority."