The war in Iraq is lost. The tipping point has been surpassed and
no amount of violence unleashed by the U.S. military can restore the
equilibrium in that country. Our invasion has plunged them into chaos.
Iraq has now entered the beginning stages of civil war which will last
for many years to come. The delusional dream of installing a model
democracy in the Middle East has gone up in smoke, along with much of
the country's infrastructure. Iraqis are now clearly worse off than
they were under Saddam Hussein. Much more bloodletting will come and
thousands more will die because Bush, as he has recently asserted,
"miscalculated." He purloined the passions of 9/11 by manipulating
those feelings with lies about the threat Iraq posed to us and the
world and falsely linked them to the terrorist attack in New York City.
He deviously used the psychology of war-making to inflame a nation into
sacrificing over 1000 of its young for a folly that he bet would
ultimately inflate his political stature by making him a war time
president. Now, in the face of overwhelming and incontrovertible
evidence that the dream is lost, Bush continues his deception. His
campaign ads and political speeches before carefully selected and
fawning crowds, assert that Iraq is free and building a democracy.
The media which played its time honored role in trumpeting and
supporting the war has taken to a more objective reporting approach,
with the exception of the more autocratic cable and radio stations, and
has more realistically depicted the unfolding disaster in Iraq.
Sadly, the myth of war, abetted by the Bush crowd, continues to trump
the truth in spite of the statistic that nearly 60% of the public think
something has gone awry over there. Even the hapless John Kerry has
succumbed to the war myth. His courage from an earlier time was lost
in his political calculus that speaking the truth about Iraq would lose
him the election.
As much as Bush has lied about this war and it consequences for
Iraq and us, the responsibility for its continuance now lies with each
of us. As this mirage of a noble and just war evaporates in the desert
heat each of us must take responsibility for ending the war by not
glorifying it, by awaking up and condemning the senseless and wholesale
slaughter that continues in our name. More importantly we must not
allow our young people to be recruited into believing that this war is
being fought for anything more than one man's foolhardiness. There is
nothing patriotic about this war. It is wholly nationalism, our
collective dark side, the underbelly of what is moral and decent about
this country. It is fueled by our ignorance, our hatreds, our racism,
our anger, and the thousand unfathomable fears that our minds author.
The Bush crowd cunningly manipulates these fears with their spurious
terrorist alerts.
Instead of us wrapping our small towns in red, white and blue
bunting and sacrificing more of our young to the carnage of war, we
should wrap them in our arms and refuse to let them go. Instead of
raising ole' glory, we should embrace our humility and fly her at half
mast in homage to those we have killed. Instead of sticking a yellow
magnet on our car that says "pray for our troops" we should pray for
ourselves asking god's forgiveness for worshiping the violence done in
our names.
Unless we the people demand it, the killing and dying will
continue. There is no other exit. The political season is upon us and
for this period truth telling is forbidden. Neither of the candidates
for president deserves our votes on this issue. Kerry because he sees
the truth and will not speak, and Bush because he is blind to the truth
and yet will not be silent.
Bud A. McClure is professor and chair of the Psychology Department at
the University of Minnesota Duluth. He can be reaches at
bmcclure@d.umn.edu
###
