Morally bankrupt leadership
Victory in this, the most political of wars, is not about the surrender of an army. It is about establishing a just political order. Maybe they can accomplish it. But the chances look grimmer by the day.
While Bush was eagerly using wounded GI's as a photo op yesterday, Rumsfeld was whining about the media. The same media which misled people into thinking a statue was being pulled down by a mob when it was by a crowd of around 100 is now showing scenes of disorder not seen on most TV's since the collapse of the Mobutu government in what was then Zaire.
What also amazes me is that people think the anti-war movement was trying to defend Saddam or didn't want the Iraqi people to be free. I think Tom Friedman summed it up: was Iraq like Switzerland or Yugoslavia. Well, it's turning out to be like the Congo, but he asked the right question: what was under Saddam's rule? The anti-war movement, from my perspective saw two things: one, the immense human suffering war would bring, and two: the consequences of the war.
More importantly, even if we restore basic order, clearly, the guns and militias may be with us for a while. Once a man tastes the power of a gun, putting it down isn't easy. Hundreds of thousands Iraqi teenagers are learning a simple lesson: a gun equals power.
Our leadership could have forseen that and then done things to prevent it. Instead, we mess around with Ahmed "Kerensky" Chalebi as other actors, some with various interests, plot to make things far more difficulf for us.
Instead of admitting our rush to Baghdad created these conditions, Rumsfeld, between threats against Syria, denies what any sighted person can see on their TV. It is a morally bankrupt argument.
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Sunday, April 13, 2003
Kansas @ 9:47 PM
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