okay i promised that i would post something today. here’s what’s on my mind right now…both wolfowitz and rumsfeld have recently made disparaging comments about critics of the war, dismissing them as people with little awareness of the situation on the ground over there. (in doing a search to find rumsfeld’s declaration that reporters in “air-conditioned rooms” would be to blame if the iraq war is unsuccessful, i found an article from the asia times that is good, cited and linked below).
i think i know what they’re getting at: after months and months of complicity with the pentagon, there is a backlash in the press against the war. this is tied in with the presidential campaign, and the fact that politicians everywhere in this country are washing their hands of the situation by claiming to have been misled.
it is understandable that wolfowitz, rumsfeld, and cheney are now confused. after all, they have consistently lied and misrepresented the facts in order to bring this thing about. they have, after all, been planning for this for a long long time, well before being in office in this administration. and up until now, they have largely gone uncontested. why is that? is it because lawmakers and politicians and the press actually believed them? no, it was that the opposition were afraid, in the mob hysteria of post 9/11, that it would be political and/or occupational suicide to voice concerns over our justification for going into iraq, our plans for the reconstruction, and the overall effect the war would have on our standing in the region and the world.
so everyone went along with this ill-conceived plan in the interest of “demonstrating support for our troops”, understanding full well that when the piece of shit blew up in bush’s face, they would, at an opportune moment, point fingers elsewhere and make a concerted claim they were hoodwinked. pragmatic politics.
so, in a way, i understand the angry confusion of rumsfeld, cheney, et. al……why protest the thing now, none of the basic facts have changed, and there is no such thing as “just pulling out” at this juncture. they are still spouting the same circular statements, and everyone has gone along with the bullshit with minimal grumbling until now.
politics. there is a white house race on.
i guess i wish that more people who knew better had the balls to point this out before we were irretrievably launched onto this roadmap.
Leave a Reply