Friendly Fire
Now another Pat, Patrick Daley, scion of the Chicago Democratic dynasty, has volunteered to go fight in Iraq as a member of the airborne infantry.
Maybe he believes that, John Kerry’s experience to the contrary, military service will translate into useful political cred.
Maybe he’s got a thing for guns and killing and delivering state-sanctioned violence in uniform and in the company of a bunch of like-minded guys and gals.
And maybe he’s a mental and moral idiot, the only type of person, post-Fallujah , who can still believe he’s doing God and freedom’s work by shouldering a gun and marching off to join America’s armies in the Middle East.
Like some dummkopf who comes down to breakfast in 1944 with his suitcase packed and announces, “There have been setbacks on the Eastern Front. The Reich needs my help immediately!”
It’s clear that a mandate was bestowed in November 2.
Not a mandate for George W. Bush and his policies.
But a mandate for America and its media to return to the guilty, ostrich-like state of denial and simple-minded drum-beating that, except for a brief, anxious spurt during the presidential campaign, has characterized this nation since we plowed into Iraq.
A return to those wonderful days when a “Support Our Troops” bumpersticker makes all the anxiety and heartache go away…
…and allows demoralized and disoriented progressives to pretend we are making a valid moral distinction while we slink through the day grumbling impotently about the war and the president.
While we’re congratulating ourselves on our patriotic highmindedness in celebrating the bravery and sacrifice of our troops and reveling in the gosh-darn feel good satisfaction of backing those wonderful boys and girls 1000%...
…those kids are trapped in Iraq by the Bush administration’s callous ineptitude, and by their own ignorance, military discipline, and our mindless cheerleading…
…doing God knows what to who knows who…
…unable to free themselves or our country from a disastrous war that chews up the bodies and souls of tens of thousands of people every day.
They don’t need our support.
They need our help.
They need out.
A few words of enlightenment especially for the desperate Democrats who feel we have to strap on the armor-plate jockstrap of Support Our Troops superpatriotism in order to do battle with the GOP on national security issues.
War should only be our last resort.
Not just because it’s morally nasty to kill people unless you absolutely have to.
Because, contrary to Rumsfeld’s optimistic faith that subjugating an independent country should be as easy as Wal-Mart annexing additional market territory with a new super-store, war is still a bloody, expensive, and uncertain business.
Iraq hasn’t exactly demonstrated the superiority of his low-manpower, war on the cheap strategy, has it?
The few hundred millions we spent on a containment strategy against Saddam looks pretty cost effective compared to our current billion-dollar a week effort against Iraq — especially when the experts say we’ll be there at least another five to ten years.
The burden of proof is still on the government to demonstrate that war is not just desirable or justifiable, but unavoidable.
And we should only “support our troops” when they’ve been deployed as part of a last resort response.
War wasn’t the last resort in Iraq.
If we really believed it was desperately important to get rid of Saddam, we could have restarted the Palestine-Israeli peace process and received in return broad regional and international support for forcing Saddam Hussein from power through sanctions, subversion, and graduated military pressure.
It wasn’t even the last resort in Afghanistan, where the Taliban was reportedly keen to deliver bin Laden to us.
War isn’t even the sole or best resort of U.S. policy today under preventive/preemptive/hell, war when I say so poster boy George W. Bush.
In the unlikely event that underachieving enabler Condi Rice deserves any praise for her foreign policy gambits, it is because the United States has displayed a certain amount of finesse and success in twisting Putin’s nuts with public and covert support for democracy and self determination movements in Eastern Europe and the South…
… prying away Russia’s national and ethnic shields with minimal expenditure and without the loss of American life…
…our unctuous support for the sanctity of Ukrainian elections being the most recent example.
We’ve put Putin on the defensive and even managed to extort his endorsement of Bush in the 2004 election!
Another example that the fortuitous possession of WMDs by our opponents makes us think harder and smarter…and beyond war.
So maybe it’s good for us if Iran does get The Bomb.
After all, as some of the country now realizes, it was Iraq’s lack of sufficient WMD disincentives that precipitated a boneheaded war of opportunity pushed by the most doctrinaire, irresponsible, and ignorant elements in the American government.
And guess what? War isn’t even the right answer now, in the Iraq counter-insurgency.
The U.S. military is still pathetically wedded to the NFL metrics of success in Iraq: points scored (dead Iraqis) and yards gained (we own Fallujah, baby! Too bad we’ll have to run it like a concentration camp and spend tens of millions of dollars sprucing up the rubble and corpse-infested hulk while the insurgency kills us by the fistful every day).
The real story is not only the underreported fact that the insurgency has blossomed throughout central Iraq to the extent that civilians must now be helicoptered to Baghdad Airport because we can’t guarantee security even on the four lane highway from the airport to the Green Zone anymore.
The real story is that the insurgency wants us in Iraq — and fighting.
The non-stop murders of Iraqi troops, National Guardsmen, and police isn’t only a tactic of terrorism and intimidation against collaborators.
It’s an effort to make sure that the Allawi regime can’t defend itself, and must rely on more and more U.S. troops to prop up its rule and try to provide security around the country.
The more U.S. troops there are, the more the Iraqi government is hated…
…the more the Sunnis resent the Shi’a for standing by as the U.S. bombs and shoots its way through the Sunni heartland in a futile attempt to crush the insurgency…
…and the greater likelihood that Shi’ite victory in the January elections will produce civil war instead of a legitimate national government under Shi’a control.
Democracy deals the insurgency — a small minority of the minority Sunnis — a losing hand.
Civil war, on the other hand, allows the insurgents to leverage their greatest assets — their domination of the Sunni heartland around Baghdad, and the core competency of the veteran Ba’athist operatives in violence, repression, and dictatorship that will give it the upper hand in central Iraq…
…when the Shi’a either fatally compromise their national legitimacy by relying on the U.S. to protect their government from the insurgency a la Allawi — or insist that the United States get its troops and bases the hell out of Iraq.
Either way, the Sunnis win.
Right now, the “best case” scenario for the United States is an elected Iraqi government that is so violently anti-American that they demand that we leave, and we rev up the transports for home, happy in the knowledge that we are throwing to the wolves a government — and a country — that we really don’t like.
Is this an outcome worth fighting, killing, or dying for?
Our soldiers are not dying to protect our “freedom”.
They are dying because of flawed policy, failed strategy, and incorrect tactics.
They are dying because Americans don’t have the appetite to challenge their leaders and this war, because the mind-numbing reductionism of “Support Our Troops” offers an easy escape from the difficult moral and political question of…
…what do we do when our sons and daughters kill, torture, and terrorize a civilian population they despise…
…in the service of a sordid, degrading exercise in counter-insurgency on behalf of an illegitimate émigré regime ten thousand miles away…
While they themselves die and are maimed…
Not only because of enemy action…
…but by idiotic, self-deluding calls to support them and their mission…
…making it politically possible to keep them in theater and in action…
…instead of demanding that they come home.
Calls that are almost as deadly and destructive as…
…friendly fire.
Our troops don’t need “support” from ignorant armchair patriots as they try to shoot their way through the hell of Iraq.
They need pity, help, and possibly mercy to deal with the wrong and awful things that are happening to them — and they are doing over there.
If the idea that our kids in Iraq are eager if deluded bit players in an epic pornographic snuff film directed by George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld is too hard to take, here’s something a little more palatable.
Here’s the coda to a heartwarming Support Our Troops item from the LA Times, about L.A. School Police Officer and U.S. Army Major Daniel Fricke, who got rounded up some second-hand police equipment for the Iraqi police department in he trained in Irbil.
Leave aside the fact that the Irbil police might very well flee their posts at the next insurgent attack, and those used bullet proof vests will then end up on the backs of America’s enemies.
Read about his son, Jerred.
Ironic, isn’t it, that the streets Fricke has resigned himself to his son securing are in Iraq, not in Los Angeles.
We get Jerred after he’s finished his work as a U.S.-subsidized mercenary for Iyad Allawi — if at all.
So remember, “Support Our Troops” isn’t just friendly fire against some kids who’ve got to come home.
It’s friendly fire against us — who need these kids, with their real bravery, heroism, and dedication at work at home in a good cause, keeping us safe, united, and prosperous.
So don’t say “Support Our Troops”.
Say “We Need Our Heroes Back Home”.
Listening, Patrick Daley?
Listening, Democrats?
Listening, America?
Copyright 2004 Peter Lee
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
