March 28, 2008
by Robert Fantina
As President George Bush tirelessly continues inflicting terror on the people of Iraq, a deadly process now completing its fifth year, it may be beneficial to review the stated and actual causes of the war, and see just what it has accomplished for the U.S.
In March of 2003 the U.S. 'preemptively' invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq. This followed proclamations by Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powel that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was developing nuclear weapons as well. These, they warned darkly, were there for the sole purpose of destroying the American people and their cherished way of life. To further frighten U.S. citizens, they alluded strongly to a link between Iraq and the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania, an event that continued to fester like a sore on the American psyche. The fact that a bipartisan panel studying those events found no credible link to them from Iraq was unimportant to the oil-hungry war mongers.
U.S. citizens were dubious, but were willing, apparently, to give Mr. Bush the benefit of the doubt. Not so the members of Congress; they demonstrated no hesitation when they stood up in their hallowed halls, endorsed the president's words and gave him a free hand in unleashing American-brand terror on an oil-rich nation on the other side of the planet. Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, displayed their patriotic credentials by voting for war.
It is worth recalling that U.N. weapons inspectors were, at that time, enjoying free reign to sites in Iraq to which they had previously been forbidden. They scoured the country and found none of the weapons that Messrs Bush, Cheney and Powell swore were there.
U.S. allies too, for the most part, paid little heed to the Administration's fear mongering, and with few exceptions did not encourage America's planned imperial misadventure.
Yet on March 19, 2003, after telling the U.N. to remove its inspectors if they valued their lives, Mr. Bush began his 'Shock and Awe' campaign, targeting residential areas (in a nation where more than 50% of the population was under the age of 15), expecting a quick victory over an impoverished nation. Indeed, on May 1, 2003, Mr. Bush declared victory. After making a dramatic and unnecessary landing by jet on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, 30 miles off shore, and dressed in a flight suit, Mr. Bush proclaimed this: "In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
This, of course, was a lie to match those he and his cohorts told about the reasons for invading Iraq. It took Alan Greenspan, the former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, to finally put the truth on the table. In his 2007 memoir he said this: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
Mr. Bush's war for oil has, thus far, killed at least 1,000,000 Iraqi people and 4,000 U.S. soldiers. While he calls it the front line on the war on terror, it is he who has brought terror to a level previously unknown in world history. Additionally, he has used this war on terror to justify the wiretapping of U.S. citizens; the creation of infamous rendition centers around the world where unspeakable torture of human beings occurs; the deprivation of basic rights from those he deems unworthy of them, and the approval of 'interrogation methods' that are banned as torture by the Geneva Conventions and shunned by all civilized nations. He has poured countless billions of dollars into his wars while 47,000,000 Americans have no health insurance, the people of New Orleans are still attempting to put their lives together two-and-a-half years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their city, and tens of thousands of U.S. citizens risk losing their homes to foreclosure as the nation slides headlong into recession.
Throughout the rest of the world the U.S. is hated and resented; Mr. Bush himself is viewed in polls as one of the world's foremost terrorists. Each bloody death of an Iraqi citizen motivates others to lash out at the nation that has caused so much suffering for five years, with no end in sight.
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At least 2,000,000 Iraqi citizens have fled their homeland for the relative safety of refugee camps in neighboring countries. Those remaining in Iraq are deprived of the electricity, water and other vital services they took for granted prior to the U.S. invasion. The suffering of the people under their deposed and now executed leader, Saddam Hussein, was nothing compared to the suffering they now experience under Mr. Bush's deadly reign.
As the U.S. heroes that Mr. Bush so often summons in his speeches return home from battle physical and emotionally injured, they are left to languish in unspeakable conditions in the nation's veterans' hospitals. At the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the showcase of such hospitals, behind the few areas typically seen in news reports soldiers remain in rooms where mold covers the walls and mouse droppings are seen everywhere. They are cannon fodder, useful to kill Iraqis, forced into repeated deployments, but cast aside when they can no longer perform such 'useful' functions.
This is the legacy that Mr. Bush, the self-styled 'War President,' proudly leaves. His first seven years in office have been marked by two murderous, immoral wars; the neglect of suffering Americans; the restriction of civil rights at home and the torture of prisoners abroad. His administration has provided tax benefits for the wealthiest U.S. citizens while the poorest are unable to visit a physician because they cannot afford medical care. During his first term he had the most dismal record of job creation since Herbert Hoover. In eight years under President Clinton an estimated 9,000,000 jobs were created. In Mr. Bush's first four years, an estimated 200,000 jobs were created. Yet only recently, when home foreclosures are at a record high and all economic indicators point to recession, has Mr. Bush acknowledged that the country ".is going through a rough time." At the same time he pointed to the low unemployment rate as one indicator of an underlying strength of the economy. Yet that figure is badly skewed because after a period of several months a person who is on unemployment is considered to have stopped looking for a job. Apparently the government feels that these people no longer need to eat, have a place to live or provide for their families. Mr. Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland, said that allowing for those who have given up looking for work, the unemployment rate is actually 6.8%, not the 4.8% Mr. Bush would have the country believe.
One might conclude from all this that Mr. Bush cares for little other than enriching those who have put and kept him in power. The 'hardworking Americans' he mentioned in a March 14 speech, who are worried about their futures, were not represented in his audience: the Economic Club of New York, comprised mainly of wealthy executives, the very people who benefit most from Mr. Bush's economic policies. The 'hardworking Americans' are their employees, not themselves. An economic turndown hardly causes a ripple in their privileged lifestyles, but it means the difference between home-ownership and foreclosure for many who they employ.
Five years into the Iraqi War and occupation, it is not the members of the Economic Club of New York, or their privileged cronies, who suffer; it is not they who leave spouses and children with half their previous means of support to try to carry on while their soldier-spouse fights for Mr. Bush's stolen oil. It is not they who try to scrape together some kind of life in New Orleans nearly three years after that world was turned upside down. It is not they who tearfully watch their sons and daughters go off to an uncertain future in an imperial war.
In a true democracy, there would be methods of redress; the people's elected representatives would not tolerate such abuses of power and such maltreatment of their own citizens. But when control of the government rests in the hands of the wealthy corporations who buy elections for their chosen few, those purchased commodities will not willingly bite the hand that so generously feeds them and, if displeased, can distribute its largess elsewhere.
And so U.S. life and governmental policy continue. Mr. Bush and his successors will tell U.S. citizens that while all may not be well right now, the foundation is strong and they just need to ride this through. Waving a flag around while speaking will certainly silence any meaningful dissent; certainly the opposition party will not open its mealy mouth to protest. And while Mr. Bush fiddles, Nero-style, with the nation's future, the economy slowly burns out, following America's reputation into the trash. And those who will be required to clean up the mess will not be any who were responsible for its making.
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Robert Fantina [send him email] is a long-time activist for peace and social justice. He has worked with the Coalition for Peace Action in New Jersey. Following the 2004 presidential election, he moved to Canada, where he now resides. Robert is the author of Desertion and the American Solder: 1776-2006.
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