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Grandpa John McCain, on the stump in Columbus, Ohio, shared a little fairy tale about his vision of “victory” in Iraq.
Papa John calmly intoned the following:
“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom.”
Ah, ain’t that sweet?
We can all rest better knowing that America will “be secure in her freedom” at some time in the future if we only have the iron-willed determination to offer the youth of our nation in bloody sacrifice on the altar of corporate greed and rapaciousness by invading, destroying and subjugating each and every nation which has exploitable resources and a government, democratic or totalitarian, that does not explicitly do the bidding of the State Department or the White House.
One may ask, however, what Papa John means by ‘freedom’, so I will.
What restraints on our freedom had Saddam’s regime ever placed on the American people?
None.
What condition of slavery, detention or oppression has been rectified in the US by the destruction of Iraq?
None.
Have the people of the US attained further political independence, possession of additional civil rights or been liberated from unlawful authority as a result of this war?
No.
Are the US people now exempt from such onerous conditions as hunger or disease because Saddam has been over-thrown?
No.
In point of fact, the American people are less ‘Free’ now than we were before the attacks on September 11th or the wars in Southwest Asia and whatever further restraints to personal freedom the people of the US are currently subject to have been placed on us by the hysterical railroading of legislation in the wake of the 2001 attacks - such as the cynically misnamed ‘Patriot Act’- which have been calamitous to civil liberties and the general good.
So much for the 'freedom' side of this fairy tale but Papa John’s pathetic little fantasy continued:
“The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension.”
Now, one may ask, “The Iraq war was fought and won for whom?”
The Iraqis? Hardly.
Has any serious commentator or observer of the invasion or its aftermath claimed the Iraqis better off now than under Saddam’s brutal dictatorship when, with callous disregard for the well-being of the Iraqi people, the Bush administration dismantled and debilitated all of the institutions of national stability, disbanding the armed forces, designating all Baathists as anathema and resulting in the on-going chaos of violence and depravity which is observed today and which in all likelihood will dominate Iraq for a generation?
By what measure, in 2013 or any year, could any rational person claim a victory, Johnny Mac?
With more than 4,000 American forces killed and an estimated Iraqi death toll well over a million during the first 5 years of the war, what will the body count be after another half decade of this insanity? Will all of the spirits of the dead assemble to bestow blessings on what you and Dubya’s complicitous cohorts proclaim as ‘democracy’ in Iraq?
Thanks but no thanks, Grandpa John. Keep your absurd and contemptible fantasy about Iraq to yourself. It offers nothing but an eerie insight to your very warped and disturbed mind.
End the War Now!
Impeach Bush!
Impeach Cheney!
Impeach Scalia!
Indict and prosecute the war profiteers and war criminals to the fullest extent of the law. Make them all pay the price for their greed, their arrogance, their disdain for the rule of law and their disregard for humanity.
The rest of us already have.
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