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Playing
Politics With War
By David Michael
Green
04/06/07 "ICH'
-- - If there’s a way for the regressive right to be more
repugnant, I, for one, am at a loss to see how.
Their latest trick is to accuse
Democrats seeking to end the travesty that is Iraq of “playing
politics” with war. Imagine that.
At some level, you do have to
admire these guys for their genius in figuring out how to have
it all. The problem is that that some level is not the moral
level, nor the national interest level, nor the peace level, not
the democracy level. It’s the plunder level, the predatory
politics level, and the shame level.
So what, eh? Big deal. Hey,
think about it. If that whole morality thing is not an issue,
what could be better than to create a war in order to enhance
the stature and domestic political power of the president, use
the war to win elections, distract from other issues and
eviscerate the opposition, and then use it once again to club
opponents as they struggle to clean up your spreading mess?
Damn! That’s clever stuff.
You’d almost need a Karl Rove to dream up a scenario this good.
(What’s that you say? Oh. Well, never mind.) Anyhow, this is
a big-time win-win-win situation for the president and the
movement he leads.
But it also happens to be an
unmitigated loser for the rest of the world. Call me a nag if
you must, but put those on a balance scale and most of us can
see the preferred choice. So can Rove, though somehow his
calculus comes up a bit different.
War has many casualties, even
when an administration works assiduously to make sure you’re
unaware of them. There are dead Iraqis and dead Americans.
There are severely wounded Iraqis and severely wounded
Americans. There are emotionally destroyed Iraqis and equally
ruined Americans. There are Iraqi refugees and there are
American deserters. There is the broken Iraqi infrastructure
and the bleeding American budget. There is evaporating security
in the Middle East and a wrecked American military. There is a
decomposing national morale in Iraq and the destroyed standing
of America in world opinion. And there is, always, the
shattering of truth – there, here, everywhere.
One casualty that doesn’t get a
lot of attention is the health of American democracy. The
patient was on life support only a couple of years ago. Last
rites were administered. And while it has shown some
substantial improvement of late, the long term damage done to
the poor wretch in the last six years has been incalculable.
This is a body politic that smoked four packs of unfiltered
Camels and drank a fifth of Old Fedcal every day, that’s smashed
up the family car more than a few times, that’s had a decrepit
organ or two removed, and that still today remains addicted to
crystal meth. Even the new and improved American democracy is a
cripple.
And why not? What breeds more
cynicism than to deploy the symbols national security and
nationalism itself, in service to a devastating war based on
lies? What takes a greater toll on honest national discourse
than to attack the patriotism of those who disagree with a given
position (let alone a disingenuous and disastrous position) on
that war? What corrodes the democratic process more than to
punish politicians for speaking even semi-clearly and
quasi-honestly about the most significant issue of our time?
The latest conservative
deception in a very long line of them is to attempt punishing
Democrats for their meager efforts to put an end to this literal
and figurative open wound of a war. Since we seem to be doing
medical metaphors today, this would be the rough equivalent of
hurling poisoned darts at ER surgeons while they’re desperately
trying to resuscitate a rapidly fading victim of a train wreck.
These regressive deceits would
be disgusting even if we didn’t know that the war was planned,
for purposes of enhancing Bush’s political power, from before
the administration even came to office. But we do know that.
They would be revolting even if
we couldn’t prove that BushCo themselves knew the WMD rationale
was weak, but nevertheless chose to market the war as though
Iraq were an imminent danger. But we can prove that.
These lies would be sickening
even if the people behind this sort of political destructiveness
had ever once shown themselves remotely competent in executing
the occupation – notwithstanding its complete moral bankruptcy –
before criticizing others. But they didn’t.
And they would be nauseating
even if these most savage politicians – almost all of whom
checked the ‘C’ for Coward box when they were being called up
themselves – weren’t continually hiding behind the very troops
they fail adequately and properly to train, protect, deploy and
care for at home. But they are.
The reason that such politics of
deceit would still be so detrimental, even without all these
other exacerbating factors, is because they are so profoundly
corrosive of democracy, and so destructive to the process of
making of sensible public policy (which is another way of saying
avoiding stupid wars).
Sure, there are politicians who
are immune to this basest form of politics, profiles in courage
like Paul Wellstone or Russ Feingold. But for every one of
them, there are tons more like Hillary Clinton or John Kerry or
John Edwards, who are so interested in advancing their careers
that they are willing to cast even this most despicable, this
most murderous, this most shameful of votes to get there. I see
little moral daylight between someone who could knowingly vote
for a war based on lies in order to benefit themselves, versus a
contract killer. Except that one of these two murderers has
only a single victim.
Make no mistake about it. Many,
many Democrats have some heavy soul-searching to do over their
Iraq-related crimes (assuming said soul can in fact be
located).
But it is far more outrageous
for the Neanderthal Right to accuse Democrats of playing
politics as they seek a path to at least stop (forget about
restoring) the damage done by those who cooked up this little
travesty, and who absolutely did use the war for political
purposes. These guys were playing with matches and have set the
house on fire. Now they’re whining about the water damage
caused by others seeking to douse the flames.
No ideology that has made a
career – from McCarthy to Nixon to Reagan to Bush – out of
distorting national security issues into political weapons gets
to lecture anyone for supposedly politicizing the attempt to end
a disastrous war. These are the very same people, ladies and
gentlemen, who brought you the accusations that Democrats “lost”
China (as if a billion Chinese didn’t have a wee bit more to say
on that score), that there were 57 known Soviet spies in the
State Department, and that the domino theory was going to spread
communism all over the world.
No party that schedules a vote
on the Iraq war a month before a national election gets to
criticize another for playing politics with the war. Especially
when – five years and a million dead bodies later – that other
party is trying to end the war in the wake of another election,
in which the public expressed just that “finish this now”
sentiment with their votes. In droves.
No administration which
continually drapes itself in the symbols of national security –
from photo ops with (non-maimed only) troops, to plastic turkey
dinners in Iraq, to even dressing up (non-)GI George in a flight
suit – all while failing to actually care for soldiers properly,
gets to question the patriotism and the troop-supporting
credentials of those who pass legislation requiring adequate
training, rest and equipment for soldiers going to Iraq.
Part of what is going on here is
bad habit, picked up over decades. The right has learned all
too well that a foolish and ill-informed public can usually be
counted on to buy any sort of jingoistic tripe about the threat
from the latest big bad bogeyman du jour. Remember the damage a
communist China was going to do? Now they own our federal
government. Remember Vietnam? Now they’re one of our best
trading partners. Remember how Nicaragua was just two days’
drive from Harlingen, Texas (good god, who writes this crap)?
Remember bad, bad Mr. Castro and all the efforts that have gone
in to destroying him? He’s certainly harmed American security,
hasn’t he? For fifty years now he’s caused damage like...,
like... Well, there certainly must be something, that’s for
sure. Or how about that nasty drug dealer Noriega? Or the
looming threat of Granada? Good thing sainted Reagan had the
stones to put out that fire, before it swept right across the
American Heartland. What a visionary he was! None of the rest
of us even realized the danger of the Grenadian menace. Phew!
What a close one.
Yep, part of what is going on
here is bad habit, but part of it is also sheer frustration.
The old magic just isn’t working anymore. The handle gets
cranked, the machine parts move, the scary film at eleven gets
screened, but hardly any stupid votes cast by stupid voters are
being spit-out nowadays. And if you think that might be
frustrating for a regressive politician, imagine what it feels
like when their very next realization is that they’ll instead
have to go to the voters with other issues – you know, big GOP
winners like healthcare, environmental protection, Social
Security, the economy, or corruption. We’re talking about some
very frightened folk, here, with visions of pink slip blizzards
dancing in their heads.
Regressives are already dusting
off the old Vietnam mythology so that it can be applied to
Iraq. This war could have been won, you see, if only liberals /
the press / Jane Fonda / whatever didn’t snatch defeat from the
jaws of victory at the last moment, betraying our national
security. But it just isn’t working anymore. The Dixie Chicks
are winning Grammies, dude, not John “Let the Eagle Soar”
Ashcroft.
Partly it doesn’t work because
of Vietnam, itself, which has made us (just a bit) wiser, and
therefore quicker (not to be confused with quick) to spot an
unwinnable war based on lies. Partly it isn’t working because
the lies told in this case were so brazen, and traded so
cynically on the genuine fears of a post-9/11 America, that
there is a palpable and powerful sense of betrayal floating
around out there. Partly it doesn’t fly because, in addition to
such twisted lies, Americans have been horrified at the utter
incompetence which has attended the ‘management’ of this war.
And partly it isn’t working because the ownership of this
particular fiasco is so transparently in one set of hands. Try
as they might, it’s tough to get anyone to believe this was
Harry Reid’s war.
This show is over. And not a
minute too soon, either, because it’s been one ugly ride.
The only good thing to say about
it is that the president’s fellow bottom-dwellers of the right
who helped create this disaster have been slow enough to
disassociate themselves from Bush and his war that it is now
taking out the entire movement and the party which represents
that movement.
Regressive conservatism, the
GOP, and the political opportunists who represent both are
dead. You can smell it.
And you can find their bloated
and mutilated bodies in the Baghdad morgue.
David
Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra
University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers'
reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net),
but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to
respond. More of his work can be found at his website,
www.regressiveantidote.net.
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