Roadkill Journal

Yesterday, David Reinhard over at The Oregonian brought us our week’s worth of empty right-wing rhetoric on Iraq:

“The Iraq War”

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/david_reinhard/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1142639705101790.xml&coll=7

One more volley in the constant war of words over Iraq would hardly be worth noting except for the target of this verbal assault:

“Is it my imagination, or do many of the anti-war left who sally forth at every bit of bad news seem to want Iraq to fail? I know. That's harsh. They wouldn't be rooting against a peaceful and democratic Iraq or the U.S effort there, would they?”

Blow on, Mr. Blowhard…

Is it my imagination, or is Dave trying to set up a scapegoat?

I’m going to do something I shouldn’t… I’m going to recall Vietnam…

No, I’m not going to try to make the case the Iraq war is “another Vietnam.” Sure, there are parallels – both wars sourced in long-forgotten European colonialism, both wars were unnecessarily prolonged by American blunders, both wars suffered from the weakness of an ill-defined objective… And in both cases the US found itself in the unenviable position of supporting one bunch of bastards over another even though the “good guys” were just as bad as the “bad guys.”

The similarities go on, but so do the differences. Over-reliance on the similarities would be misleading.

Yet there is one parallel that is too strong to overlook: The scapegoating by the war party for its own failures.

Never mind Vietnam wasn’t our war. Never mind the military blunders – blunders that began in the White House - which squandered American military victories. Never mind the troops left to fight a dynamic action from the inherently underdog static garrison position, the army that suffered the death of a thousand ambushes.

Never mind the corruption of the regime we fought to install.

None of that had anything to do with the failure. The failure was entirely due to the American left and their media lackeys. Just ask the revisionist apologists…

It wasn’t Johnson’s blunders… It was Walter Cronkite proclaiming the war lost after the Tet offensive. It wasn’t the tenacity of an enemy who had been fighting their own war of independence in one form or another since 1941… It was Jane Fonda lounging on the deck of an enemy AA battery…

And today it’s the same. It isn’t the defects in the original case for war, defects which by their nature gave the left their most potent arguments. It isn’t an ill-conceived and badly flawed strategy that lost the peace as fast as it won the initial battles.

It isn’t the corrupt Shia militias and their death squads, nor is it the factions whose goal is to dismember Iraq and divide it inequitably, permanently impoverishing a minority as a new underclass.

It isn’t the ineptness of the new Iraqi army, running about blindly, as it did in Operation Swarmer, unable to even catch up to the enemy they were sure was waiting to be caught…

No, it isn’t any of that. It’s “the left”… It’s Hollywood… It’s Cindy Sheehan and her collaborators in the left-leaning press…

It’s turncoats like Bill Buckley and George Will…

Just ask Dave and his colleagues among the scapegoaters. Everything would be fine if they could only silence all dissent, obscure all the lies, and bury all the blunders…

It’ll end eventually, this misadventure in the Fertile Crescent. A “democratic” government will be formed –by Western standards more theocratic than democratic but at least elected – and the Iraqi economy will slowly rebuild itself. Of course, the violence will likely continue because its ultimate source is the same tribal cesspool that put Saddam in power in the first place and left him there for twenty years…

And of course the faux stability created will survive only as long as American troops remain in Iraq to prop it up. After we go – whether that is in two years or twenty – the wolves will descend once more upon the ancient city of the Tigris, bringing their new Saddam.

Eventually, the cause which Americans have bled for – a western friendly, democratic Iraq - will be lost.

But it will all be the fault of the mostly peaceful actions of individuals in a country half a world away who didn’t back their President, right or wrong, come hell or high water…

A little advice for Dave and his fact twisters:

All you need right now to really fix the blame where it belongs is Cindy Sheehan perched on an enemy gun – maybe an Iranian gun, since that’s where our mis-leaders intend to send the army to die next…

Better yet, your warmongering neocon colleagues need to talk Susan Sarandon into sitting on the gun instead… Sheehan hasn’t got the legs for it…