"Why the hell would the Department of Defense be the organization in our government that deals with the reconstruction of Iraq?" -- Retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni.
DETROIT -- President Bush ignored Gen. Zinni's poignant question, along with many other fundamental issues about the occupation of Iraq, in his speech Sunday night.
But he did promise to try to snuggle up with the UN and, in a rare moment of candor, George W. did tell the American people he wanted to charge another $87 billion dollars to the nation's maxed-out Visa bill and that Iraq is "the central front in the war on terrorism." He also mentioned he wants to "engage the enemy where he lives and plans." You would have to go southwest and east of Iraq to do that. The planning is in Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin Laden is, by most reports, holed up in a cave-motel in Pakistan.
We heard again how much safer the world is because, even if he didn't have nuclear and other terrible weapons, old Saddam was certainly thinking about them. An aside: U.S. experts have now been scouring Iraq longer than UN weapons inspectors were given to search for Saddam's elusive weapons of mass destruction. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice urges patience -- something she never offered to the UN's Hans Blix, an unfairly maligned and honest man.
And, of course, we hear again the most important reason for the war was fighting international terrorism. No longer will Saddam Hussein and his gang be able to work with Osama bin Laden and his murderous operatives in al-Qaeda. The fact that they never did in the first place doesn't matter. What the Bush administration sells is the rhetoric of fighting terror. The reality is another thing.
In every public utterance President Bush has made on the subject over the past two years, his scriptwriters have included the words, Iraq, Saddam, terror, al-Qaeda, and references to the Sept. 11 attacks.
While it is a colossal lie to say Saddam had anything to do with the attacks, the deceitful rhetoric has worked extremely well. A new Washington Post poll shows 70 percent of the American people believe Saddam Hussein had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. The administration successfully sold that big lie with the help of the compliant, corporate media machine that allowed the rhetoric to be repeated countless times with hardly a challenge.
That impression of Saddam's role persists, despite the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and the well-planned attacks were financed through bin Laden's Saudi money-backers.
Even though Bush administration operatives don't claim any evidence that Saddam had a hand in the attacks in New York and Washington, they refuse to say that forthrightly, because it would dull the rhetoric and justification for the invasion of Iraq.
Instead, they continue to focus on remote, incidental and meaningless links between al-Qaeda and anybody or anything that sounds like Iraq or Saddam. Of course, the war has opened the doors for al-Qaeda nuts from all over the world to flood into Iraq, ignite a brutal jihad and kill American troops everyday. Iraq and al-Qaeda are now very much linked -- the unintended, but predictable, consequence of the preemptive invasion and anguishing occupation.
It was so easy and convenient to picture Saddam as a demon, put a frightening face on terrorism, lump all the bad guys together and exploit the average American's unsophisticated understanding of Middle East violence.
The false impression was deliberate and calculated. Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguistics professor who has studied Bush's rhetoric, told the Washington Post, "Clearly, he's using language to imply a connection between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11. There is a specific manipulation of language here to imply a connection." Tannen notes that Bush seems to imply that, in Iraq, "we have gone to war with the terrorists who attacked us."
Years from now, the Saddam-Sept. 11 lie will be viewed as one of the most successful and dangerous pieces of propaganda and duping of a free people ever achieved. It is a lasting disgrace for our democratic institutions, which allowed it to happen, and the media that was, for the most part, a willing partner in the mass deception.
Gen. Anthony Zinni is the former chief of the U.S. Central Command and, in that role, he directed all military operations in the Middle East. So when he unloaded on the Bush administration's handling of post-war Iraq in a speech to several hundred Marine and Navy officers, military insiders stood at attention.
Gen. Zinni blasted the Bush administration for failing to develop a strategy that makes sense, a workable plan and a commitment to provide sufficient resources to get the job done in Iraq.
"There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together," Zinni warned. "We're in danger of failing."
Then the retired general, who was severely wounded in the Vietnam War, raised the specter that sent shudders through the White House. Speaking to the officers, many with shared experiences, Zinni raised the harsh question. "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is this happening again?"
President Bush, whom Gen. Zinni endorsed in the 2000 campaign shortly before his retirement, sure didn't want to hear that.
Zinni also fears U.S. armed forces are stretched too far and unduly burdened with the civil reconstruction of Iraq. He says the administration should have worked earlier and harder to get a UN resolution to get more nations to provide troops to help in Iraq. Zinni didn't pull punches.
"We certainly blew past the UN. Why, I don't know. Now we're going back hat in hand."
Getting international cooperation will require a radical transformation and recognition that the ham-handed policies of the past have created the quagmire of today.
The president cannot expect multinational participation when he treats other nations and world opinion with contempt. You don't go swaggering into delicate diplomacy like a gin-drunk, gun-slinging, Texas cowpoke, demanding cooperation from other nations.
Bringing in the UN requires shared responsibility, especially in developing a civilian government in Iraq that will have any chance for popular support and long-term stability.
The notion that all is well and we are just "staying the course" is absurd. Former CIA director Stansfield Turner recently wrote an op-ed piece in the Christian Science Monitor, warning that changing course begrudgingly and gradually will not work.
"The longer we hesitate to increase our troop strength in Iraq, to pour billions of dollars of our own money into reconstruction, and to invite the UN to play a substantive decision-making role, the more the chance of failure," Turner warns.
George W. Bush still refuses to acknowledge that the stated assumptions behind the invasion of Iraq were wrong, and his latest proclamation about the future of Iraq thus has to be weighed with serious doubt.
The former CIA director wrote, "Only the president can declare a change of course. His acknowledgment that we have made some mistaken assumptions and are changing direction would help repair our strained relations with much of the world community."
George W. Bush, as always, chooses hubris over humility and rhetoric over reality.
He refuses to speak the truth to the American people.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the costly, deadly and difficult venture won't stop more from happening.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | September 9 2003 |