Bush Bashing

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="043d05a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>American Pantheist Society</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="American Pantheist Society"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Welcome"><U>Welcome</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id80.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Society Application"><U>Society Application</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Objectives"><U>Objectives</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Church"><U>Church</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id25.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Privacy"><U>Privacy</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id26.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contributions"><U>Contributions</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id37.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ecology"><U>Ecology</U></A>   |   <B>Bush Bashing</B>   |   <A HREF="id27.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><U>--Type Title Here--</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id44.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Publication"><U>Publication</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id34.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Copyright"><U>Copyright</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id35.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact"><U>Contact</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id36.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Questions"><U>Questions</U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="044d2123.jpg"> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>Bush Bashing</I></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Do you agree with this position?</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>May 2, 2005 Iraq: 'Mission Accomplished'? </B></div> <bR> <div> That depends on what the mission was... by Justin Raimondo <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#CC0000" FACE="Arial" >http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5800</FONT></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="7" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>T</B></FONT>wo years ago Sunday, in a splashy display of his role as commander-in-chief, George W. Bush <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>landed</U></FONT> on board the <I>USS Lincoln</I> in the co-pilot's seat of a Navy S-3B Viking. Standing amid a sea of his <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Praetorians</U></FONT> – against the backdrop of a <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>huge banner</U></FONT> proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" – our president had a distinctly Napoleonic air about him as he exuberantly proclaimed:</div> <div> <I>"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."</I></div> <bR> <div> As <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>violence surges</U></FONT> in "liberated" Iraq, auguring all-out civil war, the memory of this breast-beating moment – not to mention that unfortunate banner – mocks us across the years, haunting the families and friends of the fallen, <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Iraqis</U></FONT> as well as <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Americans</U></FONT>. Bush blithered on: "The tyrant," he intoned, "has fallen" – yes, and as a government of <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Shi'ite fundamentalists</U></FONT> takes the helm, <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>a new tyranny arises</U></FONT> to take his place, put there by U.S. force of arms. With the liar, embezzler, and Iranian double agent <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Ahmed Chalabi</U></FONT> installed as <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Iraq's oil minister</U></FONT>, it is fair to ask: what is the nature of this "mission" we are supposed to have "accomplished"?</div> <bR> <div> In his <I>USS Lincoln</I> <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>speech</U></FONT>, the president toted up our achievements thus far, claiming that we fought a war "for the peace of the world" – yet today the specter of a wider war looms over the entire Middle East, <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>threatening to engulf</U></FONT> Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran, and even Egypt in a regional conflagration.</div> <div> "In the images of fallen statues," Bush averred, "we have witnessed the arrival of a new era." That image of Saddam as a fallen idol amid a crowd of seeming thousands turns out to have been emblematic of the <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>lies</U></FONT> [.pdf] and <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>media manipulation</U></FONT> that characterized <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>the War Party's strategy</U></FONT> from the beginning.</div> <bR> <div> The felling of the statue was a <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>phony media event</U></FONT>, i.e., a non-event staged for the cameras: just <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>as fabricated</U></FONT> as the "<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>evidence</U></FONT>" of Iraqi "<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>weapons of mass destruction</U></FONT>." The former was created by our <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>complicit</U></FONT> "mainstream" media, while the latter was manufactured by <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Chalabi's group of exiles</U></FONT> and <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>retailed</U></FONT> by the Pentagon. This is how a self-perpetuating <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>circuit of deception</U></FONT> was created between the media and the U.S. government, to keep the American people in the dark.</div> <bR> <div> "In the images of celebrating Iraqis," the president continued, "we have also seen the ageless appeal of human freedom." These are <I>images</I>, not reality: mirages, as it turned out. Not that many Iraqis showered us with rose petals, and today a great many more are shooting at us. After two years, the insurgency, says a top U.S. general, is "<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>undiminished</U></FONT>." </div> <bR> <div> Mission accomplished? Not likely, for this is a mission <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>without end</U></FONT>. </div> <bR> <div> Prefiguring the <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>militant neocon rhetoric</U></FONT> he would elaborate on in his 2005 "<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>fire in the mind</U></FONT>" speech – in which, you'll remember, he proclaimed that the goal of U.S. foreign policy is "ending tyranny in our world" – the president jumped out of that fighter plane and bounded on to the runway, fired up by a mystic vision of his messianic mission:</div> <bR> <div> <I>"Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food, and water, and air." </I></div> <div> If that were true, humanity would have died out long ago. I blame the president's speechwriters, however, who should have known better than to haul out this crackpot <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>intrinsicism</U></FONT> – the theory that certain ideas are inherent in human beings, rather than learned – to buttress the false claim that American troops are "liberators" and not <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>aggressors</U></FONT>. After all, if the tendency to create free societies is an inborn human trait, common to all people, then why was it necessary to invade Iraq in the first place? For that matter, how do we explain <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>the 20th century</U></FONT> – and the mostly dark and bloody history of preceding centuries? </div> <bR> <div> In reverting to <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>religious despotism</U></FONT> to replace <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>the secular version</U></FONT> recently disposed of, Iraq is re-proving history's oldest lesson: that liberty is as rare as it is precious – and is, in any event, unlikely to be successfully transplanted to the Middle East any time soon, either by American force of arms or indigenous movements. </div> <div> Bush's "mission accomplished" speech is a study in <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Bizzaro World</U></FONT> logic, unfulfilled prophecies, and brazen prevarication. Virtually every jot and tittle of it turned out to be a lie, especially including this whopper:</div> <bR> <div> <I>"For a hundred years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever growing scale. In defeating Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, Allied Forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation. Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war. Yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent."</I></div> <bR> <div> Two years on, the respected medical journal <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><I><U>Lancet</U></I></FONT> conducted a study – based on provincial averages <I>excluding</I> the "Sunni Triangle" war zone – that estimated <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>as many as 100,000 civilians</U></FONT> were killed by Anglo-American firepower. Weren't they "innocent"? Ask <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>the residents of Fallujah</U></FONT> if we haven't "destroyed entire cities." </div> <bR> <div> The lesson of the American occupation is that there are no "precision weapons" when it comes to policing a conquered nation: as the occupiers fight a growing insurgency, everyone else is caught in the crossfire. </div> <div> If only <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>the guilty</U></FONT> had anything to fear from this war, then we are all of us guilty as sin. Because it has been a disaster all around, for the Iraqis and for us, in every possible sense. From the loss of lives to the <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>diplomatic</U></FONT>, <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>geopolitical</U></FONT>, and <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>financial</U></FONT> consequences of the continuing conflict, this war is a net loss – and the American people, in their wisdom, <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>agree</U></FONT> with that assessment.</div> <bR> <div> Mission accomplished? If the mission was to create conditions giving rise to sectarian violence, a growing insurgency, and all-out civil war, while dragging us to <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>the brink of bankruptcy</U></FONT>, then, yes, you might say that. But only <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>if you were Osama bin Laden</U></FONT>.</div> <bR> <div> While <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>the ability</U></FONT> of this administration to delude itself seems without parallel or limit, it is second only to their ability to delude the American public. <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>How many still believe</U></FONT> that Saddam Hussein personally planned the 9/11 terrorist attacks? It's a remarkable achievement, in the Bizarro World sense that a <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>monstrous lie</U></FONT> can be permanently embedded in the popular imagination as the conventional wisdom. No one knows how much the American government spends on propaganda worldwide, including under-the-table payments to favored pundits, e.g., <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Armstrong Williams</U></FONT>, <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Maggie Gallagher</U></FONT>, and whoever else is in on that particular <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>gravy train</U></FONT>.</div> <bR> <div> Bush's frequent references to "images" in his battleship address underscores the self-consciousness of our rulers as they try mightily to put one over on us. An image can reflect many things, not all or even most of them the truth. It is a concept <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>imported</U></FONT> from the advertising industry and Hollywood. Just as a glamorous star has to keep up an "image" that is totally divorced from the real person, so those glamour-pusses in Washington, the biggest stars on the world stage, must maintain their image as all-powerful yet wonderfully <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>benign global hegemons</U></FONT> – as opposed to <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>the not-so-glamorous reality</U></FONT>.</div> <bR> <div> The imagery conjured by our president and his propagandists is akin to a mask. In this sense, having access to <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>Antiwar.com</U></FONT> is like having x-ray vision – it gives you a clear unobstructed view of what's happening <I>behind</I> the headlines. And we do it 24 hours a day. </div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>