Photo: In this Sept. 16, 2007 file photo, a woman takes her dead son into her arms, six-year-old Dhiya Thamer, who was killed when their family car came under fire by unknown gunmen in Baqouba, capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad. (AP Photo/Adem Hadei, File)
What if they ended a war and nobody cared?
Then, because it is not permissible for a president to acknowledge that wars are sometimes follies that end ignominiously, Obama went on to make the obligatory assertion that America won the Iraq War:
“[E]verything that American troops have done in Iraq — all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering — all of it has led to this moment of success.”
Finally, having conferred this empty stamp of rhetorical approval, Obama whitewashed the motivations that actually led the Bush administration to start the war. In one of the most disgraceful sentences of his presidency, he said,
“That’s part of what makes us special as Americans. Unlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources. We do it because it’s right.”
If Obama had gone on to add, “They hate us for our freedom,” his impersonation of George W. Bush would have been complete.
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More from the above link:
They need to look at the ignorant, twisted and duplicitous men and women who started it, at the institutions that failed to stop it, and at their own complicity in it. Above all, they need to look at its terrible toll.
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We need to remember that this war was launched under false pretenses by an administration that used fake evidence to push it through. Americans need to remember their own understandable fear after 9/11, and how they allowed cunning and manipulative ideologues to exploit it.
We need to remember that the institutions that should have resisted the war – Congress and the media – completely failed to do so. Drugged by post-9/11 patriotism and groupthink, America’s representatives and their journalists abandoned their posts at the crucial hour.
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Yes, the US politicians and US corporate media lied from start to finish on this hideous occupation of Iraq. And they show no signs of stopping, and no signs of noting how TENS OF MILLIONS of lives were damaged forever. Below is one soldier’s apology to the Iraqi people, and a commentary on the LIES that we tell ourselves about this war of aggression.
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I understand the psychology that causes the aggressors to blame their victims. I understand the justifications and defence mechanisms. I understand the emotional urge to want to hate the people who killed someone dear to you. But to describe the psychology that preserves such false beliefs is not to ignore the objective moral truth that no attacker can ever justly blame their victims for defending themselves.
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History has preserved these lies, normalised them, and socialised them into our culture: so much so that legitimate resistance against US aggression is incomprehensible to most, and to even raise this question is seen as un-American.
History has defined the US veteran as a hero, and in doing so it has automatically defined anyone who fights against him as the bad guy. It has reversed the roles of aggressor and defender, moralised the immoral, and shaped our societies' present understanding of war.
I cannot imagine a more necessary step towards justice than to put an end to these lies, and achieve some moral clarity on this issue. I see no issue more important than to clearly understand the difference between aggression and self-defence, and to support legitimate struggles. I cannot hate, blame, begrudge, or resent Fallujans for fighting back against us. I am sincerely sorry for the role I played in the second siege of Fallujah, and I hope that some day not just Fallujans but all Iraqis will win their struggle.
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