We have lost Afghanistan as surely as we have lost Iraq and as surely as we are going to "lose" Pakistan. It is our presence, our power, our arrogance, our refusal to learn from history and our terror--yes, our terror--of Islam that is leading us into the abyss. And until we learn to leave these Muslim peoples alone, our catastrophe in the Middle East will only become graver. There is no connection between Islam and "terror". But there is a connection between our occupation of Muslim lands and "terror". It's not too complicated an equation. And we don't need a public inquiry to get it right.
From
"The Little Men and the Inferno
The Hell-Disaster of Iraq"
By ROBERT FISK
March 19, 2008
http://counterpunch.com/fisk03192008.html
*********************************************************
This war was for the good of our nation.
Knowing that the floodgates of global chaos (agriculture---economics---raw materials---climate change etc.) were opening, we needed to secure vital areas of the world that have petroleum.
We had to kill in order for you and I to survive.
This is the way it is and this is the way it has always been.
We can’t be philosophers.
We can't be moralists.
Do you want your children to have food and water...
Or for others to have them?
We could not take the chance that other nations would secure resources that our country---you and I---needed here in the homeland.
Yes, lies were told.
But these lies were well-intentioned fabrications.
The world is standing at the crossroads of a new paradigm:
Who will live and who will die?
We decided for the good of our nation to be the ones who will survive.
It is us or them.
IT'S THE OIL STUPID!
Each year of George W. Bush's war in Iraq has been represented by a thematic falsehood. That Iraq is now calm or more stable is only the latest in a series of such whoppers, which the mainstream press eagerly repeats. The fifth anniversary of Bush's invasion of Iraq will be the last he presides over. Sen. John McCain, in turn, has now taken to dangling the bait of total victory before the American public, and some opinion polls suggest that Americans are swallowing it, hook, line and sinker.
The most famous falsehoods connected to the war were those deployed by the president and his close advisors to justify the invasion. But each of the subsequent years since U.S. troops barreled toward Baghdad in March 2003 has been marked by propaganda campaigns just as mendacious. Here are five big lies from the Bush administration that have shaped perceptions of the Iraq war.
I posit that each year of the war has been characterized by a central lie by the Bush propaganda machine.
Year 1: "There is no guerrilla war.
"Year 2: "Iraq is a model democracy.
"Year 3: "Zarqawi is causing all the trouble.
"Year 4: "There is no Civil War.
"Year 5: "Everything is calm now.
"I also suggest that John McCain is pushing for:
Year 6: "Total victory is around the corner."
Juan Cole
No comments:
Post a Comment