The War on Iraq must be seen as the path to power that the twin war mongers,Cheney and Rumsfeld,embarked on after the U.S. ignominiously retreated from Vietnam. The rightwing that claimed that the defeat was brought on by the Liberals who tied the hands of the military was waiting for the right opportunity for over thirty years to reverse the results of Vietnam.While all of us drew the lesson that the U.S. should never again get involved in a land war in Asia, the rightwing drew a very different lesson.In essence, it blamed America’s defeat on not deploying its power enough and the stance of Liberals and Democrats that negotiated solutions to conflicts are a better way of resolving disputes.
So, a war was declared on the defeatists at home and war became the way to resolve conflicts abroad.The war on the Democrats meant that nothing would be off the table, including fixed elections,packed Supreme Court,disenfranchisement of black, hispanic and other minority voters.The ultimate was,of course,fraudulent vote tallying that led to the “election” of a wastrel like Bush.That war at home still continues with the buying of rightwing shills, planting of news items in newspapers and TV and a continuing assault on reason through the rightwing Christian fundamentalists.
The war abroad was conceived as a laboratory to test out Reichsfuehrer Rumsfeld’s theories on asymmetric warfare.His pet idea is that we must wage a Long War with minimal deployement of our own resources and create constant conflict among our enemies using political differences. Thus, the Shia will be pitted against the Sunni, the Kurds against both and so on.
The creation of chaos within their societies with high sounding words on Democracy and Freedom providing cover would replace pitched warfare against an agile enemy that could blend in with the population. In this war, psychological warfare would be just as important as terror.The surfacing of opportune tapes,the killing of journalists,staged executions by masked gunmen and the planting of news stories for consumption by Americans are part of the arsenal.
In an ironic way,the history of the past few years resembles every depraved act of the Nazis and the Soviets,only this time the tools for propaganda are better and more sophisticated.An epiphany of sorts occurred to me when I saw the abject figure of Harry Whittington apologizing to Cheney for causing him mental anguish.To assume that Cheney ever feels mental anguish for inflicting physical harm on anyone is a stretch in and of itself.That was clear to me when the gloating figures of Cheney and Rumsfeld appeared on TV when Saddam’s two sons were killed and strung up with their hideous corpses put on display.
That our country is now ruled by thugs is a fact.In a twist of Abe Lincoln’s address, one could even say we now have a government of thugs, by thugs and for thugs.