As an addendum to my previous post, The Smoking Gun, I give you this, just received from Truthout.org, by William Rivers Pitt. Truthout is one of my almost-daily must-reads, and this essay is a definite must-read for all of us. Link is at the end of the post.
From the end of the essay:
"This moment is described as the tipping point. Large majorities of Americans, in every poll, believe the Iraq invasion was unnecessary and the casualties thus far inflicted to be unacceptable. For the first time, the poll numbers show that a clear majority of the American people no longer believe that George W. Bush is keeping them safe. Bi-partisan coalitions are forming in Congress to demand that the US withdraw from Iraq and give that nation back to the people who live there, and those coalitions are edging towards majority-sized numbers. Legislation has been presented demanding withdrawal, and more is in the offing.
And now, the Minutes. Tomorrow, the Minutes. Every day, the Minutes, until there is a reckoning."
Please go to the preceding entry and sign the Conyers letter to the President. Let's move towards a reckoning together.
6 comments:
Thanks again....I've signed.
Give Iraq back to the people who live there? After we have gone over there and wreaked complete havoc on that country? Like it or not, we have a responsibility to those people, now that we have completely f'd up their country. We need to figure out how to best address the mess WE have made, and then help the people to do that. We can't just pull out and say, "Oops...my bad. Here's your country back. Sorry it's broken beyond recognition..." Lisa :-]
Lisa - i'm not sure how you envision our "fixing" the country that we have without a doubt hideously broken. withdrawing the troops, stopping the merciless slaughter and destruction, of both our troops and Iraqi civilians, would seem to me to be a good start. we have, alas, paved the way for a terrible civil war to break out as soon as our troops left, however - so, what? we have to stay there forever? did you read all of Pitt's essay? or just the portion i quoted in my entry? the horror of this whole thing was that this was all planned, even before the strikes of september 2001, in order to establish OUR military presence in the middle east, and gain dominance over the oilfields there. The Project for a New American Century, and the machinations of the people within it who became the power-holders in this administration, somehow remain an unknown factor for much of the population. from Pitt's essay:
" Since the publication of that article, we have learned about the Project for the New American Century, about its powerful advocates in Washington - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Bolton among them - and about their plans from 2000 that centered around an invasion and occupation of Iraq, based upon whatever pretext was available, to establish a permanent military presence in the Mideast and to gain ultimate control of petroleum management in the region."
my fear is that the power-holders of this administration have no intention of giving Iraq back to the people who live there, ever, fixed or broken. the intention is to extend the middle east domination both in time and area. this was just a place to start.
I guess you never saw how the Iraquis came out in droves to vote, well get a clue...It takes years in any country to get to a stable Democracy. Spain is a recent democracy after the dictatorship of Franco, and it was anything but a smooth transition. Nicaragua (my wife is from there) has also had a rough road. A Democratic presence is a good thing for the US in the middle east and the world at large, and it would be an example for other Middle Eastern countries. The polls on Bush are slightly under 50%, lowest approval rating thus far - my opinion on that is so what? Reagan also had low approval ratings and then won every state but two. The polls mean nothing. If someone were to ask me if I were satisfied with Bush in the war on terrorism, I would say no but I would still vote for him. Why? Because he is not securing the borders, but the left would protect us even less. In the cold war, we placed troops all over the globe because of the danger of Russia. Now, it is time to redeploy these troops because the world has changed, and we face a different and new type of threat. Troops should be placed on the border. I guess you need a nuclear bomb dropped on us first My blog
Thanks for the great entry. And, yes, I will sign the Conyers letter. (By the way, thanks for your comments Mark. Your words remind me what we're up against here -- a whole lot of misinformed citizens who too easily conflate the virtue of patriotism with an unquestioning support for military prowess.)
Lisa is correct: we do have a responsibility to the Iraqi people to help fix what we have destroyed. But it has become clear to all that our very presence is the cause for most of the tension. We need to really work at making this an international effort that is aimed at helping the Iraqi people, not American corporations.
Mark's comments leave me baffled. Again and again we are told about the voting, the voting as if that was democracy in action and it was all our doing. The Bush administration dragged its heals at ever step resisting elections only to give in to pressure brought about by Al Histani. The elections were a joke by any measure, allowing people to vote blindly for parties rather than actual candidates. The Iraqis had no idea who they were voting for and we call that democracy?
If our history is any indicator, the only type of "Democracy" we will allow or tolerate is one that coddles our corporate interests in the region.
dave
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