Well, we're back in Iraq, and I, for
one, couldn't be more relieved. I mean, the suspense was unbearable!
Anybody with a grain of sense could have seen that even if we
withdrew “all combat forces”, but left a square-mile embassy with
thousands of employees, something was going to have to give sooner or
later. (Actually, I'm not convinced we ever really left. Uniformed
troops, maybe – but let's not forget the CIA and their mercenary
army.) At any rate, now we send “military personnel” (not
“combat troops”, mind) back to Iraq to protect all those American
citizens, as well as “American interests” (whatever those might
be), and to, as usual, act as “advisers and trainers” for the
Iraqi army, which is... well, let's just say it's an army that we
defeated and scattered to the four winds after the invasion, and then
reconstructed in some way hoping that they would do some of the heavy
lifting (AKA dying) when we started getting pushback from
“terrorists”... i.e. people who were unhappy with our invasion
and occupation and decided to do something about it. The newly
re-formed Iraqi army was, of course, composed of the unemployed
(thanks to our destroying Iraq's infrastructure) who were desperate
for some source of income with which to keep themselves and their
families fed, clothed, and sheltered. Problem is, people fighting
for an idea have a tremendous advantage over people merely fighting
for material gain – especially when the idea people are willing to
use suicide tactics. So far from neutralizing Iraq as a source of
Islamic aggression, we instead created a hotbed – a hatchery of
sorts – for a new wave of Islamic fundamentalism and aggression.
Well, it worked in Afghanistan, why not in Iraq?
Just kidding, of course. One more
dollar tossed into that craphole is one dollar too many – to say
nothing of American lives. And am I saying that American lives are
worth more than Iraqi lives? Maybe, on some universal cosmic level,
no – but in terms of foreign policy we have to operate on that
basis, the same way Israel operates on the premise that Israeli lives
are worth far more than Palestinian lives. This is, sadly, the way
nations always operate in war time, and this mindset is, in a way,
key to victory, just as it has always been in all wars down through
history. Let's recall the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
both premised on the notion that American lives were worth much more
than Japanese (including civilian) ones. Sad, but true; this is how
wars have always been fought, and in some sense it's the only way
they can be fought – unless, of course, victory is not the goal,
and when you look at our escapades in Southwest Asia you start to
feel like maybe that's the case.
So yes, wars are not about
internationalism, one-worldism, “kumbaya”, or anything else. On
the most basic level, they're about killing (or at least disarming
and neutralizing) people who aren't like us so that people who are
like us (or who are us)
can continue to enjoy their lifestyle. (I always wonder if we
would ever have dropped an atomic bomb on Berlin, for example, even
if the European war hadn't come to an end by that time. I think the
answer is no, simply because the Germans, as mesmerized as they were
by der Adolf, were still, basically, a lot like us, whereas the
Japanese were “little yellow devils” who deserved no quarter, and
no mercy. And yes, I'm talking about racism, which has a perfectly
natural, if atavistic, role to play in war.)
So yeah, we're going back into Iraq
because we have “interests” there. And because there are
Americans in harm's way. But who put them in harm's way? And who on
earth allowed anyone in this country to develop “interests” in
Iraq that had to be defended? It's all a scam, basically – you
send people into a war zone (or a place that's about to be), then
declare them in danger, and send in troops to protect them, and then
send in more troops to protect those troops, and before you know it
we're right back where we started. It's a scam... but it works! It
worked in Vietnam, it worked in Panama, and it's working in Iraq. It
works everywhere it's tried; it's fool-proof. It is, in
fact, one of the primary building blocks of empire. We don't just
arbitrarily invade another country – we first establish
“interests”... strategic necessities... we declare that country,
and/or its leadership, to be a grave threat to humanity and
especially to the survival of “the American way of life”. Or,
when it comes to Southwest Asia, to Israel, which basically amounts
to the same thing. Then you throw a few other ingredients into the
pot, like “weapons of mass destruction”, “human rights
violations”, “fascism” (a perennial favorite), “theocracy”
(bad, bad), and you have all the evidence you need to mount a
full-scale attack.
But if that's the basic, tried-and-true
strategy, where does Obama stand? Well, first, he's just following
orders. But imagine his frustration. He ran for president with an
idea -- “hope and change” -- which, for him, meant turning the
U.S. into a people's republic, or at least a socialist Utopia. In
other words, it was all about domestic policy. Somewhere along the
line, not unlike Bill Clinton, he forgot (or never learned) that
there is also this thing called foreign policy – and it's messy,
chaotic, thankless, and, in our time, not based on much more than the
agonized writhing of a dying empire.
He didn't ask for this; he didn't want
it. But it was dumped into his lap, along with marching orders from
the usual suspects – Wall Street, the international
banking/financial cartel, the neocons (yes, still very influential,
even in an administration they pretend to despise), the Evangelicals
(ditto), Israel, the countless racial, ethnic, and victim-group
lobbies, and, I'm sure, any number of others. So he races around
like Lucille Ball in one of her classic sitcoms, trying to do
everything at once and please everybody, and gets very little thanks
and a lot of criticism, and... well, what's a community organizer
from Chicago supposed to do? So he, basically, checks out. He
doesn't know anything, he didn't know anything, and it was all
(still, after 5 ½ years) someone else's fault.
Now, don't get me wrong – this is not
an expression of sympathy. He wanted this job, and he got it, and
now he's paying the price. And I guess this could be said of all
presidents, although a few manage to come out on top in spite of it
all. But in the array of what I'll call “victim presidents”,
Obama certainly is in the top rank, along with other sorry specimens
like Carter and Bush II. What distinguishes victim presidents is
that they start out behind the power curve, never catch up, and only
manage to make things worse. And one could say, well, they were only
victims of history – but there were still plenty of opportunities
to do better, and the fact that they all failed shows a certain...
what? Level of hubris? Plain stupidity? Spite? More like all
three, and more. The other distinguishing trait is that they never
show any insight. They are absolutely blind to not only their own
failings and the impact it has on the country, but they continue to
defend their record, and their “legacy”, where someone with more
insight (or at least shame) would retire to the farthest reaches of
the country and never raise their voice in public again. (At least
Bush II deserves a bit of credit for shutting the hell up most of the
time, unlike his former cronies.)
But having said that, it's nonetheless
true that the cards are stacked against The Anointed One. He's
faced, on a daily basis, with a myriad of intractable problems –
dilemmas that simply can't be solved by any mortal, because they are
the products of years – decades – centuries, even – of folly
and delusion. It's no wonder he runs off and plays golf on a regular
basis; I would too. He is, as I've said, a face in a suit,
basically... not his own man... and yet he must feel the sting of
this situation now and then. At least in Chicago he had a willing
audience and could talk himself into thinking he was accomplishing
something; now it's just one debacle after another, with no end in
sight. So he's turning gray... getting more glum by the day... and
whatever happened to that dazzling “hope and change” smile? He
looks, acts, and talks like a defeated man – and he is, basically,
no matter how many pathetic “victories” he manages to eke out
through executive orders. Now it seems he's buying a house in
California. Why not Chicago? Doesn't he want to return to his
roots, a home town hero? Don't ask...
Here's the point. When you're the
leader, or even the figurehead, of a nation that is on the way up in
the world, you never have a bad day. You go from victory to victory,
and even failures can be, somehow, recast as “strategic”
victories. And you get credit – most of it undeserved, but
nonetheless sufficient to have your name cut into countless blocks of
stone around the Mall in Washington, and, with any luck, to have your
likeness rendered in stone, or on coins or (worthless) paper money.
You become, in short, part of the American Pantheon. On the other
hand, when you're the leader, or figurehead, of a dying empire, you
never have a good day. Even events which might have been considered
victories in better times turn out to be fatally flawed... all the
idols have feet of clay... and rust and corruption are everywhere.
And again, it's not necessarily to your discredit (Obama isn't
entirely wrong in continuing to blame everything on Bush) but try
telling the populace that – or the media, or (dread!) the
historians. They will ignore what small, pathetic victories and
achievements you might have managed to pull out of the mire, and
you'll be known forever after as “the president who...” (did
something really bad, or allowed something really bad to happen).
And yet, such is the typical
politician's genius for denial and delusion that most of them never
come to terms with their true record. Oh, maybe on some surface
level they wish things had gone better, but to gaze out over the
bottomless chasm of failure... this is too much to ask. So Carter,
for example, remains delusional in thinking he has something to
offer, even though his administration was an exercise in farce and
folly... Bush II continues to live in a fantasy world... and Obama?
It's only a question of what grotesque form his delusions take as he
fades into obscurity (or, worse yet, doesn't).
Of course, he does have 2 ½ more
years. He could repent. He could wander over to the National
Archives and take a good, hard look at the Constitution. He could
grant Congress the respect it doesn't deserve but nonetheless ought
to have. He could quit being a thug. But what are the chances?
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