< PREVIOUS ] [ 2004 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
One of the strangest events of this political season was
Georgia Sen. Zell Miller's keynote address to the
Republican National Convention (who knew that he could howl
better than Howard Dean?). He said that nothing makes
this Marine madder than someone calling American troops
occupiers rather than liberators.
President George W. Bush, whom Miller was vociferously
supporting, has used the term occupier
or
occupation
on several occasions when referring to
the American presence in Iraq. And even if Bush sometimes
has trouble with our language, he was using it properly
there.
Nothing makes this English major happier than a politician using the right word. But that's about as much clarity as one can find, and John Kerry isn't the only one sending mixed signals here.
Go back to the days right after Sept. 11, 2001. Osama
bin Laden and Al Qaida were public enemy number one,
and to that end, American soldiers were sent to
Afghanistan, which had been harboring bin Laden and some of
his followers.
The Taliban regime was soon toppled, and there were many
of us who hoped that the United States could play a
constructive role in nation-building
in Afghanistan,
a poor country which had been oppressing women while
dynamiting a world heritage site.
But instead of staying the course
in Afghanistan,
the Bush administration soon announced that the bigger
threat was Saddam Hussein and Iraq, and shifted resources
accordingly. What sort of mixed message did that send
soldiers in Afghanistan? That they were risking their lives
in an irrelevant sideshow?
At the time, I thought a case could be made for invading Iraq, although the Bush administration never bothered to make it. The case was pretty simple:
Like it or not (and I don't), America relies on oil from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Those nations were threatened by Iraq, which had already invaded Kuwait once before. Thus we had to keep forces in those countries, which is expensive. It's also a provocation to those Islamist extremists who view Arabia as a holy place that should not be profaned by our infidel troops. Change the regime in Iraq, so that neighboring countries don't have to be protected from the Republican Guards, and these problems could go away.
That's not the case that the Bushites made, though. They rightly pointed out that Hussein was a thug and a tyrant who brutalized his own people. But unfortunately, this world has many cruel despots, so why attack that one instead of one of the others?
Instead of presenting a practical argument for invading
Iraq instead of Rwanda, they delivered a series of
falsehoods. In December of 2002, Vice-President Dick Cheney
claimed that Hussein's regime has had high-level
contacts with al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided
training to al Qaeda terrorists,
thus implying a
non-existent connection between Iraq and the 9/11
attacks.
Two years ago, as he revved up America for an invasion,
Bush said that Iraq possesses and produces chemical and
biological weapons,
and that Iraq has attempted to
purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment
needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich
uranium for nuclear weapons.
These rationales have been demonstrated to be false. So has the assumption that Iraq would welcome America as liberators, and that the war would be quick and easy: capture Baghdad, make a few repairs while protecting the Oil Ministry, and Iraq's oil production would pay most of the bills.
Thanks to sabotage, there hasn't been much oil production. The country mainly seems to produce kidnappings, gang wars, car-bombings and insurgencies. It's so dangerous that few foreigners dare to leave the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad.
But give the Bushites credit. There aren't any mixed messages coming from that great spin machine. There's the White House message. And the message from reality. And the two don't mix.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2004 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >