Winning
It is unbelievable to me that our "democracy" (that isn't and never was meant to be a democracy according to many conservatives) is still debating the notion of "winning" in Iraq. Winning what? I mean seriously, how would any of us know if we won?
Now I realize it seems pretty stupid for me to ask that. But think about it for a minute. If the United States "won" in Iraq, what would happen next? Right from the very start we've tricked ourselves into believing in the yellow ribbon thing. Remember the yellow ribbons that long since faded? Yellow ribbons were our way of saying we would win and the troops would be brought back home. Some Americans still think in those terms! Bury your heads in the sand, folks, and believe what the rest of us have long ago abandoned, but the troops ain't coming home, win or no win. The only way we'd ever bring the troops home is if we completely lost everything over there in the Middle East, lost all of our alliances and all of our strongholds, all of our forts. That's what it would take to bring the troops home, a total loss of the war.
So if you eliminate that fantasy, then just how do you define winning? How would we know if we had won? What is it that we are fighting and dying for over there almost halfway around the world? If you ask the troops, chances are they'll tell you they're fighting to keep their buddies alive. It's pointless to ask the troops why we're there. That's just plain circular reasoning.
Right before the November election we saw neoconservatives jumping ship as if they were on the Titanic and the bow was already forty degrees down under the water. But now that it's sunk and the survivors have been rescued, they're all right back where they were before the Titanic even left port. Nothing has changed other than the fact that a few more Democrats now owe their allegiance to and are listening to these war mongers.
But here's the thing. Back before the first Bush Jr. "victory" in 2000, back before the turn of the 21st Century, there arose this thing called The Project for the New American Century, PNAC. In their writings they spelled out what it would mean to "win" a Middle East war. They still stand by their vision and that's why nothing changed last month when we voted Republicans out of power in Congress. PNAC represents the political perspective of an entire element in American society. PNAC is the philosophy of American Zionism, of a full-function political application whose purpose is to further the cause of Zionism in Israel using every weapon in the American arsenal.
In that light, winning can only happen when the people of the Middle East join forces with pro-Israeli forces around the world, when the Arabs and the Muslims around the world become allies with Israel.
Fat chance of that, folks, which is why it seems so pointless to debate whether or not we can "win" the war by temporarily sending another twenty or thirty thousand fighting Americans into the mess.
Now I realize it seems pretty stupid for me to ask that. But think about it for a minute. If the United States "won" in Iraq, what would happen next? Right from the very start we've tricked ourselves into believing in the yellow ribbon thing. Remember the yellow ribbons that long since faded? Yellow ribbons were our way of saying we would win and the troops would be brought back home. Some Americans still think in those terms! Bury your heads in the sand, folks, and believe what the rest of us have long ago abandoned, but the troops ain't coming home, win or no win. The only way we'd ever bring the troops home is if we completely lost everything over there in the Middle East, lost all of our alliances and all of our strongholds, all of our forts. That's what it would take to bring the troops home, a total loss of the war.
So if you eliminate that fantasy, then just how do you define winning? How would we know if we had won? What is it that we are fighting and dying for over there almost halfway around the world? If you ask the troops, chances are they'll tell you they're fighting to keep their buddies alive. It's pointless to ask the troops why we're there. That's just plain circular reasoning.
Right before the November election we saw neoconservatives jumping ship as if they were on the Titanic and the bow was already forty degrees down under the water. But now that it's sunk and the survivors have been rescued, they're all right back where they were before the Titanic even left port. Nothing has changed other than the fact that a few more Democrats now owe their allegiance to and are listening to these war mongers.
But here's the thing. Back before the first Bush Jr. "victory" in 2000, back before the turn of the 21st Century, there arose this thing called The Project for the New American Century, PNAC. In their writings they spelled out what it would mean to "win" a Middle East war. They still stand by their vision and that's why nothing changed last month when we voted Republicans out of power in Congress. PNAC represents the political perspective of an entire element in American society. PNAC is the philosophy of American Zionism, of a full-function political application whose purpose is to further the cause of Zionism in Israel using every weapon in the American arsenal.
In that light, winning can only happen when the people of the Middle East join forces with pro-Israeli forces around the world, when the Arabs and the Muslims around the world become allies with Israel.
Fat chance of that, folks, which is why it seems so pointless to debate whether or not we can "win" the war by temporarily sending another twenty or thirty thousand fighting Americans into the mess.
posted by Bill | 11:02 AM
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