The Failure of
America as a Moral Force
President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq is the greatest crime of
the 21st century.
Armed with a
powerful moral case against Bush, whose lies are responsible for a war
that has caused thousands of US casualties and killed vast numbers of
Iraqi civilians, Democratic leaders are damning Bush’s war because it
did not succeed!
The Bush Regime lied and fabricated
"evidence" that
was used to deceive Congress, the American people, and the United
Nations. The vice president of the United States and the National
Security Advisor created public images of
mushroom
clouds going up over American cities unless Iraq was invaded and
Saddam Hussein’s terrible weapons of mass destruction were
destroyed.
At the time that these absurd claims were being made, experts knew
that they were false. Today everyone knows that the claims were lies.
The invasion of Iraq under false pretenses comprises solid grounds for
impeaching both Bush and Cheney and for turning them over to the War
Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. Under the Nuremburg standard, to commit
unprovoked aggression is a war crime.
Among the consequences of Bush’s monstrous war crime are the deaths
of tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the destruction
of Iraqi civilian infrastructure, the outbreak of civil war between
Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’ites, the spreading of this sectarian conflict
throughout the Middle East and the consequent destabilization of the
region.
Try to imagine all the lives, careers, hopes, and families that Bush
has destroyed. Try to image the fate of the hundreds of thousands of
Iraqi refugees, the departure of educated and skilled Iraqis from
Iraq, the ultimate horror of civil war that is only beginning.
Official US casualties (dead, wounded, and maimed) at time of writing
total 26,194. Experts have estimated the cost of the invasion and
attempted occupation to be in excess of the enormous sum of 1,000
billion dollars.
This expenditure has made profits for Vice President Cheney, for
Cheney’s firm, Halliburton, for the US military-industrial complex,
and for private contractors, but it has done nothing whatsoever for
Americans. Senator Frank Lautenberg reports that
"Halliburton
has already raked in more that $10 billion" from the Iraq
war and that the value of Cheney’s Halliburton stock options has
jumped from $241,498 to more than $8,000,000.
Moreover, the cost of Bush’s aggression in Iraq has been covered by
red ink and foreign borrowing, which is financially punishing every
American by pushing down the value of the dollar and pushing up the
tax burden to service the war debt.
The conclusion is unavoidable that Bush has committed a massive crime
against Iraqis, against the Middle East, against American citizens and
military families, and against America’s
reputation.
Finally coming to their senses and realizing the pointlessness of
Bush’s war, the American people gave the Democratic Party control
over the House and Senate in the hopes that the Democrats would put a
stop to Bush’s war.
Was the electorate’s faith in the Democrats justified?
Listen to the Democrats’ statements and judge for yourself.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden
declared
on ABC’s "This Week" that
"it’s the
failed policy of this president, going to war without a strategy,
going to war prematurely, going to war without enough troops, going to
war without enough equipment."
Senator Hillary Clinton, a
likely
Democratic candidate for president, says:
"This was his
decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently
executed
The Democrats are damning Bush not for his monstrous crime but for
failing at it!
Instead of holding Bush accountable for his crimes with impeachment
proceedings, Hillary Clinton merely wants Bush to get rid of the
problem so she will not be troubled with it on her watch:
"We
expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves
office." Hillary says it would be
"the height of
irresponsibility" for Bush to pass the war along to the next
president.
A moral, humane, decent, honest person would define "the
height of irresponsibility" as the act of taking two
countries to war on the basis of lies and deception.
Now that Bush and Cheney have lost their war due to their incompetence
and faulty execution, the Democrats are going to pass a non-binding
resolution against escalating the war in Iraq. While Congress
negotiates
a posture on the Iraq war, the Bush Regime moves forward with its plans
to attack Iran.
Everyone can see the US buildup of massive air and naval attack forces
on Iran’s borders. Fox "News," the Bush Regime’s
main disinformation agency, is busy preparing its viewers for the US
attack by whipping up fear and hysteria over Iran. The Bush Regime
suddenly changed its line and now blames Iran instead of al-Qaeda for
its defeat in Iraq. The Israel Lobby is working around the clock for a
US strike on Iran. On January 30 Bush again threatened that he will
respond firmly if Tehran escalates its involvement in Iraq.
Bush’s threats are part of the propaganda that is creating an excuse
that Bush can use to attack Iran.
Bush plans to bomb Iran. US war doctrine has been altered to allow
Bush to use nuclear weapons to attack Iran. American
neoconservatives
and Israel’s right-wing have argued in behalf of attacking Iran with
nuclear weapons, and a number of foreign experts are forecasting such
an attack.
While Bush prepares in public view his war on Iran, the Democrats turn
a blind eye. For the Democrats the only issue is whether or not Bush
should send 21,500 more US troops to Iraq.
The issue is whether the war in Iraq can be quickly ended, or
Bush
and Cheney impeached, before the two war criminals create a more
monstrous crime and a more dangerous situation for America and the
world by attacking Iran.
