Whose side?

Explosion in the "Green Zone" this week, and a good number of the news accounts I've read have referred to the relative calm of the last few weeks in Baghdad. This is another one of those "flare ups" they've been referring to over the last four years; or worse, an attempt to keep the Iraqi Parliament from negotiating through key issues, such as the petroleum law. It bears pointing out that these are issues key to us, not them, and that if these people represented the vast majority of Iraqis, they wouldn't be substantially made up of recently arrived exiles and wouldn't have to meet in a fortified pillbox. Be that as it may, the finger of blame on this attack points inevitably to the "friendly" Iraqis. I heard one pundit opine (when she managed to tear herself away from talking about Don Imus) that this was an "inside job". What that means I'm not certain (they only discussed Iraq for about 30 seconds), but as I've said before in these pages, when this Iraq policy is finally over, its failure will be the Iraqis fault... so much so that you will think they had invaded us.

From the beginning the onus has been placed on them. They were a rogue state menacing their neighbors. They were an existential threat to the United States. And yet, what the hell kind of way is this to defeat an existential threat? The last time one could claim our nation was engaged in a war with an enemy who could possibly destroy us was World War II. That brought about a national mobilization - young men were drafted by the million, many others volunteered for or were pressed into stateside service, legions were employed in war related industries, and people were taxed and had their consumption of essential goods regulated accordingly. If we are, indeed, fighting for our lives right now, why are so few of us actually involved in the fighting? Why aren't we all being asked to sacrifice something for the salvation of America, just as the "greatest generation" was asked to do by their elders (the, I don't know, "not-so-greatest generation")?

Give up? Well, I'm gon' tell yuh. It's because we aren't fighting for our lives. Not really. Sure there's danger - there was danger during the cold war, too - but that danger is being aggravated by the war in Iraq, not reduced by it. There is no clear existential threat to the U.S. posed by the Iraqi insurgency, and that's why our government feels it has the luxury to play only the safest political cards and avoid all the dicey ones. Draft? No need - we've got an all-volunteer force we can deploy again and again (and again...). Taxes? We'll cut those and just borrow the billions we burn in Iraq - free money, folks! Vote for me!! Rationing? That's just plain unAmerican and unnecessary... unless you're (wait for it) under attack, which we plainly are not. We're not fighting the Nazis across a 1,000 mile front. We're not withering under the Luftwaffe's nightly terror bombings. We're fighting a war of choice, with the objective of securing a pro-western government in Baghdad and opening the Iraqi economy to the kind of extreme neoliberal exploitation that must surely inhabit Paul Wolfowitz's piratical dreams.

Why can't we trust Iraqis? Because they can't trust us. This they know from experience.

God bless you, Mr. Rosewater. Just a word for Kurt Vonnegut, who passed away this week. Great thinker, great writer, great humanist. This old interview on Fresh Air gives you some idea why.

luv u,

jp