Here’s a blast from the past to help you memorialize our dead soldiers:
[Paul] Berman’s convoluted attempt to connect Saddam’s secular Baath Party and the Islamist al-Qaida is a feat worthy of a medieval schoolman. But at bottom, it is simply a fancier version of the justification for war put forward by another liberal hawk, Thomas L. Friedman. Friedman also advocated toppling Saddam, but not because of some supposed ideological or historical connection between Baathism and Islamism. His argument was more straightforward: A “terrorism bubble” had built up in the Arab world, and it needed to be popped. As a convenient evil tyrant, Saddam simply offered a good opportunity for the United States to smash the Arab world in the face and teach it a lesson. Neither Friedman nor Berman ever explained exactly how smashing the Arab world in the face was going to turn it away from Islamist radicalism, or why the dubious attempt to install democracy by force in a fractured, wounded land with a bitter experience of colonial rule was worth risking thousands of American lives for. But intoxicated by what he with typical self-critical honesty called “the first sip of this drink called humanitarian intervention,” and fastidiously put off by what he perceived as the crudeness of the antiwar movement, [George] Packer signed on for the crusade.
That’s the liberal side of it. Then there is the real deep insanity:
The [Office of Special Plans] OSP also recruited several Middle East experts, including Harold Rhode, a protégé of the Princeton Arabist Bernard Lewis. Rhode, whose keen grasp of regional realities was reflected in his musing that one way to transform the Middle East would be to change the Farsi alphabet in Iran to Roman, was an ardent proponent, like other neocons, of installing Ahmad Chalabi as prime minister — thus restoring Shiites to power. “Shiite power was the key to the whole neoconservative vision for Iraq,” Packer notes. “The convergence of ideas, interests, and affections between certain American Jews and Iraqi Shia was one of the more curious subplots of the Iraq War … the Shia and the Jews, oppressed minorities in the region, could do business, and … traditional Iraqi Shiism (as opposed to the theocratic, totalitarian kind that had taken Iran captive) could lead the way to reorienting the Arab world toward America and Israel.”
The result?
As of May 29, 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Defense casualty website, there were 4,409 total deaths (including both killed in action and non-hostile) and 31,928 wounded in action (WIA) as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Today is Memorial Day, so I won’t dwell on the financial costs or the Iraqi or coalition casualties. When you think about our troops today, remember to think about the people who put them in harm’s way.
