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Happy
Halloween. I type this knowing that I don't have a costume for
tonight. But that doesn't matter so much. After all, in the United
States every day is an occasion for costuming and obscuring the
truth behind the public fictions.
Costuming
of a sort allowed Washington to frame its invasion of Iraq as
"liberation" for so many months that the ignorant and the delusional
bought into it out of utter exhaustion. Costuming allowed Ahmed
Chalabi's reputation to be remade from that of an embezzler to
that of a Jeffersonian figure who is willing to Speak Uncomfortable
Truths, as if occasional press conference confrontations with
American foreign policy will grant him legitimacy in America's
newest protectorate. Pundits
across the spectrum
refer to our President as "unschooled," but that is a ridiculous
tag to put on a man with a B.A. from Yale and a Harvard M.B.A.
Exactly how much more schooling does a man need?
I
bring this up because the idea ["meme"]
that Dubya is a dunderhead is the biggest
sucker trap in American politics presently.
I very much doubt that Bush's "cowboy rhetoric" is anything but
a calculated attempt to swerve the genuinely unschooled masses,
who will believe anything. Is it realistic, for example, to believe
the US invaded Iraq because some Saddamite put a hit
on Poppy last decade? Or to liberate the women of Iraq? As Jonah
Goldberg posted a while back on NRO, Iraq was chosen
because it was easy and because there was just cause [however
fraudulent it might have been].
Everyone
loves a winner. But indications in Iraq and Afghanistan are that
the U.S. will lose both wars in the end. This despite Washington's
no-strings-attached allocation
of an $87.5 billion aid package for Iraq and Afghanistan. Failure
might not "be an option," as every hawkish commentator has said
since the beginning of this century's wars, but it looms imminent
nonetheless. However, Failure, costumed just right, can be spun
to look like Success – or at least a holding pattern of grim
attrition.
In
the seven days leading up to October 30, Arab News reports
that there were 233 attacks on US positions. This level of intensity
has not been seen during the occupation of Iraq. Nothing even
close to that level has been seen, in fact. Meanwhile, our Coalition
Partners from the Ukraine found seven of their boys wounded in
an unprecedented attack on Ukrainian soldiers on Iraqi soil. How
ridiculous is it that some goofball from the Ukraine took fire
for the "liberation" of Iraq? What goes through someone's mind
when he acts as a mercenary for a government that sees him, alternatively,
as cannon fodder and a great PR symbol? Why don't questions like
that get asked in the US media?
Exactly.
Because they are costumers, day-glow painted fakers who seriously
believe that the American Way can and should be exported everywhere
in the world that longs for freedom. The rhetoric of the flag
pin crowd is soulless; this is illustrated best by the way folks
like Fred "Big-Government Conservatism Rules!" Barnes recite canned
talking points even when challenged in the most tepid manner on
talk show panels. They deal in clichés, hoping they've passed
on by the time "cascading defaults" expose the
shell game that is the American economy.
Of
course, we're not there yet. Some American companies are doing
booming business, even as civilization crumbles all around us.
Take those plucky kids from DynCorp, for example. According to
the Observer,
they've managed to score some contracts in Iraq. Good for them!
It's hard for most firms to persevere after being implicated in
child sex scandals [which do usually get a little messy]. As the
London newspaper put it, "the involvement of DynCorp has caused
concern as it has been involved in a series of recent high-profile
scandals involving personnel in sensitive missions overseas. DynCorp
personnel contracted to the United Nations police service in Bosnia
were implicated in buying and selling prostitutes, including a
girl as young as 12. Several DynCorp employees were also accused
of videotaping the rape of one of the women."
As
the truism goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. And the
picture I get from Iraq and Afghanistan is that American forces
are not wanted there by anyone but western cronies and the men
they pay off. The men of Iraq and Afghanistan certainly don't
see Americans as liberators, but as heavily-armed interlopers
who can't even speak the vernacular language of the country they
occupy. The women and children of both countries likely cringe
when they see their family patriarchs bowing and scraping to a
jacked-up punk with an automatic weapon and a hair-trigger temper.
However,
as bad as this upcoming winter looks for and in our newest de
facto protectorates, the current crisis will seem like something
from the carefree good old days in the next couple of years. These
are desperate times, and those are desperate, venal men who expect
to be treated like humanitarians because they sit on their ample
asses in talk show studios, advocating lunatic garbage like bombing
Mecca or nuking
Foggy Bottom. These mouthpieces of horror had better repent and
make peace with their creator, because there is no way on earth
for them to atone for the carnage they so coolly advocate.
~
Anthony Gancarski
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Anthony Gancarski,
the author of Unfortunate
Incidents, writes for The American Conservative, CounterPunch,
and LewRockwell.com. His web journalism was recognized by
Utne Reader Online as "Best of the Web." A writer for the
local Folio Weekly, he lives in Jacksonville, Florida.
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