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NEWS & LETTERS,
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2003
'History' according to Bush
by Robert Taliaferro In the 1960s President Johnson decided that there needed to
be an escalation in Vietnam. A ship was allegedly attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin,
and a decade later, 58,000 American men and women, and countless Vietnamese, lay
dead. In 2002 and 2003 President Bush and his administration
pushed for an invasion of Iraq based on intelligence estimates regarding an
allegedly viable nuclear and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program operating
in Iraq. With American troops dying daily, and a morale problem that is starting
to be reflective (to a lesser degree) of Vietnam, we now find that at least one
part of Bush’s reasons for going to war with Iraq were false. There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein needed to be
removed from power. He was a despot in the model of Stalin, Pol Pot, or Hitler.
There is a question, however, if a manipulated war by the Bush administration
was the proper recourse. THE MORAL LOW GROUND It is hard to stand in judgment of others when your
closets--after opening--are full of the skeletons of deceit. It is hard to stand
on the moral high ground when you place your young people in harm’s way,
shouting juvenile schoolyard phrases like “Bring it on!” as you send young
men and women off to war. It is hard to contemplate or define actions that you call
right, that only a generation ago, you once condemned as violating national
rights. When we look at the lessons of history, we can look at Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, and scream about the Russian invasions of those
countries with righteous indignation. The U.S. government stood on the sidelines as Hussein used
poison gas against Iranians and Kurds in the 1980s and the government turned a
blind eye to American companies supporting his WMD programs. Ironically, the
U.S. also supported the Afghan war against the Russians at about the same time.
Now, when those former friends of our political agendas have worn out their
welcome, they have become the enemy. Bush talks about people attempting to “revise history”
because they challenge his presumptions and untruths regarding reasons for war.
In fact, we now find that if history is revised, the Bush administration is the
party holding the red pen. Recently a question of troop morale has arisen, which is
starting to have rather dire consequences, not only on the troops who are
expressing their opinions, but on mainstream journalists as well. UNTRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES Troops who were lied to by their commander-in-chief are now
being disciplined; a journalist who reported those opinions is being attacked by
the White House as they attempt damage control after Tony Blair failed to
appease Americans’ growing questions about the intelligence that led to war. In Great Britain, the man who accused Blair of exaggerating
the nuclear threat of Iraq recently turned up dead. A coincidence, we would
hope, that still gives us chilling reminders of other countries who deal with
those who disagree with the government in similar fashions. We hate to discuss conspiracies and conspiracies within
conspiracies at the highest levels of government, but when we are not in
country-wide denial, we finally realize that in three decades our leaders have
lied time and time again, and that many conspiracies actually had basis in fact.
No one will be sad to see a post-Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. But we do expect
that such causes be justified and supported by truth. We must remember that Bush still has countries on his Axis
of Evil slate, and ironically those countries are building nuclear weapons as a
deterrent to Bush’s bully politics that are so reminiscent of the expansionist
rhetoric once espoused by the former Soviet Union. In essence, we are using the
same language, the same tactics, the same lies to support the rhetoric which
we--as a country--now espouse. As CIA Director George Tenet falls on his sword for the Republic, and Blair soft-shoes in front of Congress, the fact still remains that the responsibility for war, and the reasons of war, lie squarely in Bush’s lap. As young men and women die in Iraq daily let us not forget that the continued loss of life is as much in his hands, as those who trigger the rocket-propelled grenades or AK-47s at those young men and women in the field. |
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