The perils of playing tin god? Tin gods tend to have tin ears.
[2017 NOTE: Illustrations removed due to copyright questions. GWB note is White House photo, and, thus, Public Domain. You paid for it, in other words.]
George W. Bush: mission accomplished …
Congress that enabled him? Well, election’s coming …
And so, having invaded a sovereign nation to kill one man on false pretenses, we force fed them Galtian Democracy, trained their troops, had elections and skeedaddled. And, because we see the world as lines on a map, and not as a collection of families, clans, tribes, nations, we speak of the Kurds, the Syrian Civil War, the Crisis in Iraq as though they were all separate things.
Having paid a price in blood, still we refuse to admit that what began as screwed up has continued the whole way through. “Freedom” is “Reign”ing down all over the Middle East tonight … Pre-ja vu:
Iraq disintegrating as insurgents advance; Kurds seize Kirkuk
Washington PostIRBIL, Iraq — Iraq was on the brink of disintegration Thursday as al-Qaeda-inspired fighters swept through northern Iraq toward Baghdad and Kurdish soldiers seized the city of Kirkuk without a fight.
And, naturally, the “hawks” are screaming that we’ve betrayed the nobility of the mission, America will be seen to be ‘weak’ (to go, I guess, with ‘brutal’ and ‘stupid’), BS … BS … BS.
In the town of Mussaib, more than 400 bodies recovered from mass graves
are brought to the Islamic Youth Center, where families walk among
the dead in search of their missing relatives. (from a prior post)
You cannot hold that we have returned a “sovereign” nation to its people if they cannot hold it themselves.
Fall of Saigon after Nixon’s “Vietnamization” 1975
The same thing will happen in Afghanistan.
The hypocrisy is undeniable and shameless. This outcome was inevitable historically from the MOMENT that we decided to invade. The outcome is open to speculation, but this result — of a civil war that began the day after we “triumphed” — that one side or the other would finally triumph by force was inevitable.
Democracy is HARD.
Dictatorship is easy, be it king, alpha stag, abusive father. It is the seeming default state of humanity.
Democracy requires that an educated populace, who are informed on the issues of the day, serve a portion of their lives in public service, that we vote, and that we believe our votes matter and that we honor that will of the people.
We had more than one hundred years’ experience with local democratic governance when we declared our independence two hundred years ago.
And, given the rotten state of our “democracy” we’ ve got no right lecturing anybody ANYWHERE about how great democracy is.
It’s hard. It’s easy to fake, and can be taken over by bullies and rich thugs — as the Romans learned, and as we are now learning anew.
No one with a lick of sense should expect any people to stand up from aeons of shackles and become self-governing unless there is a powerful urge from within to do so. Otherwise, it has proven impossible to impose democracy on any culture. (Just ask the South Vietnamese.)
And, frankly, it is now none of our business, as it was not our business then. (Screw the Pottery Barn.)
But the McCain, Graham & Alotte faction will scream bloody murder, based on John McCain’s miserable and agonizing military record in his only war.
Same old tune, but not a musical one.
And Mr. “Got Milk?” Bolton will scream bloody murder, proving once again that he is the Colonel Klink figure in the deadly, Roman sit-com of Republican foreign policy circles.
John “Got MILF?” Bolton
The fundamental religious Sunni-Shia split of Iraq continues to be the core of Iraqi politics, and the gun the “Second Amendment” solution of Iraqi choice. How could Republicans possibly be against THAT?
There’s your New World Order. Hope you can stand the smell.
And the next time you decide to play tin god in a country you neither understand nor empathize with, maybe you could send YOUR sons out to a senseless war and a standardized military grave.
‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ automatically engraved at no extra charge.
Thought not.
Courage.
NEXT UP: Fall of Saigon Baghdad , 1975 2014
(Some of us have already lived through this once. Obligatory Santayana Quote goes HERE.)
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Mr. Williams has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.