July 7, 2003
Vancouver - Here in Canada's `make love, not war' capitol, I am reminded of a French reader who asked me last week, `why was President Clinton impeached for making love, while Bush goes unpunished for making a war over weapons that didn't exist?'
Excellent question, monsieur.
Asked on TV this week about steadily mounting attacks on US occupation forces in Iraq, Bush narrowed his eyes, and hunched forward aggressively - thrilling his ardent fans from Biloxi to Paducah - and growled, `Bring'em on!,' a call to battle worthy of the famously dimwitted general, George Armstrong Custer who, like Bush, knew what he knew and didn't need advice..
As a US Army vet, listening to such adolescent boasting from a man who never heard a shot fired in anger outside of downtown Washington DC made me gag. Bush, let's recall, dodged real military service during the Vietnam War by making occasional appearances at the Texas Air National Guard. Watching him play John Wayne at Iwo Jima for the benefit of his adoring core voters, many of whom believe Elvis still lives, made me realize how much American politics have been debased by the double whammy of catch-me-if-you can Bill Clinton and truth-deprived George Bush.
I mention these points because I am appalled watching Bush and his neo-conservative handlers pursue an imperial war in Iraq that will kill or wound growing numbers of American GI's and turn Iraq into the ugly twin of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Decent, honest, good-natured
American soldiers are now being turned into an iron-fisted colonial occupation army. All colonial wars - Algeria, Chechnya, Kashmir, Aceh, Palestine - are similar. Occupying forces in these dirty wars became brutalized, sadistic and cynical. Look back at Vietnam.
I shudder watching American GI's kicking down doors of civilian homes in the dead of night, threatening screaming children with their weapons, hooding and beating suspects, firing into crowds of unarmed demonstrators, and calling air strikes on villages. As night follows day, this nasty war will lead, as all colonial wars do, to torture of prisoners, masked informers, mass reprisals against civilians, secret executions. That's what happened in Indochina, and is already taking shape in occupied Iraq. Just this week, Amnesty International sharply rebuked the US for brutalizing and humiliating captives.
Bush's claims that mounting attacks on US forces in Iraq are the work of Saddam loyalists and `terrorists' belong in the same trash bin as White House lies about weapons of mass destruction. Yes, there are some Baath Party loyalists fighting US occupation, but so are many more ordinary Iraqis who are reacting as would any other proud people to invasion of their nation.
George Bush has well and truly stuck the US into twin quagmires in both Afghanistan and Iraq. These ongoing guerillas wars and their logistical support now tie down some 175,000 men, fully one third of total US ground forces.
Back in the 1980's, Osama bin Laden preached that the only way to drive the US from the Muslim World was to bleed it in a score of small guerilla wars. Bush, who now threatens to attack Iran, is falling right into bin Laden's strategic trap. Bravo, Mr President.
Iraq is not Vietnam, but we see disturbing reminders of America's Indochina debacle. US pro-consul for Iraq, Paul Bremer just requested more troops, shades of Gen. William Westmoreland. Roads in Iraq are increasingly unsafe. Attacks against US military forces are both of the amateur, spontaneous kind, and well-organized assaults by former military men. Corruption, civic collapse, and political chaos hang over everything.
The Iraqi oil that was supposed to be instantly plundered to pay for the Bush-Wolfowitz colonial adventure, and enrich powerful Republican corporate political donors, is barely being pumped due to sabotage.
Faced by the growing mess in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Administration is trying to emulate its role model, the late, unlamented British Empire by hiring mercenaries to do the dirty work in Iraq. Washington is offering billions to India and Pakistan to send 15,000 troops each to pacify Iraq's unruly natives. No one in the west will care if Indian or Pak mercenaries skin Iraqis alive or burn down their homes.
Other nations like Poland, Italy and Bulgaria, are being pressured, bribed, or lured with offers of a share of Iraq's oil to send token forces to help pull Bush's chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq. Canada has been browbeaten into sending troops to increasingly dangerous Afghanistan where they have no useful mission other than protecting the widely detested regime of US-installed puppet ruler, Hamid Karzai.
The longer US forces stay in Iraq, the uglier the war will get. And the more Americans will realize they were led into this needless conflict by a second George Custer manipulated by a cabal of neo-conservatives.
Foreign Correspondent
