Why we went to war. Posted by C.

CalPundit noted yesterday that nary a warmonger can be found whose mind was changed about the war because no WMDs were found.

So what was the real reason? And why did they all -- every one of them -- feel the need to make up a cover story?


W went to war with Iraq to further the neocon/PNAC agenda (pax americana), and to further his own political career. It's no secret that Cheney and other high ranking administration officials have wanted a war with Iraq for a long time. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that successful wars are good for a leader's popularity.

Leaders often go to war for less than benelovent reasons. This is no surprise.

I think the more troubling question is why the Merkin people supported him. And I can only conclude: because we are stupid. W used revenge, fear, and shame to manipulate popular opinion, and it worked. It wasn't so much a simple cover story as a well orchestrated propoganda campaign.

Revenge: Even as of today, polls show that most Merkins think Sadaam was involved in 9/11. No, W didn't say so. But people are more psychologically maleable than they know. (See my first blog post.) Again and again, and to this day, W mentions Sadaam and 9/11 in the same breath. And our poor little reptilian brains have come to associate the two.

Fear: WMDs. (And let's not forget that Sadaam was even made out to be nukular threat!)

Shame: He gassed his own people, and other atrocities. Oh, and "We stand for Freedom." This was to shut up or marginalize anyone who might have dared to oppose the war on the grounds that the revenge and fear angles were bogus.

Sadaam was/is a bad guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Deserves what he's getting, or worse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we've made ourselves less safe, not more safe by going to war in Iraq: We have squandered resources that could have been spent shutting down Al Qaeda, securing our borders, or improving our security apparatus. And if we really had to spend all that money getting rid of this particular evil dictator (while not noticing all the others), just imagine what we could have done with all those billions to bring down the regime without bombing the hell out of the place, destroying their infrastructure, and killing tens of thousands of innocents. A couple of hundred billion dollars would have bought a lot of influence and financed a pretty hefty propaganda campaign over there.  ¶ 1:11 PM

  Bin Laden Sadaam captured. Posted by C.

How exciting.

Lord, that beard. He looked, like, totally unelectable.

It should do as much for Junior's re-election campaign as the capture of Noriega did for his dad's.  ¶ 6:50 AM

  There are two kinds of people in the world...Posted by C.

Those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don't.

Arnold is one of those people who believe there are two kinds of people in the world: leaders and followers, or big people and little people.

And, of course, he believes he is one of the big people and that Rhonda Miller is one of the little people.

And one can only hope this will be his undoing.

He couldn't say, "No, don't smear her." He couldn't say, "You're fired." And he probably won't back down before it's too late.

Good.  ¶ 1:11 PM

  Posted by C.
Can't... stop...
telling lies.

You know I wondered about that photo of the turkey. And what was on the platter.   ¶ 9:32 AM

  Posted by C.
That Nader thing.

CalPundit links to an L.A. Times article that says Nader may run again.

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. And I am not ashamed.

There is plenty of blame to go around for dubya becoming POTUS, but very little of it should be heaped on the heads of those who voted for Nader.

The Supreme Court gets some blame for stopping a legitimate recount in Florida; Gore himself gets some blame for running a lousy campaign-- distancing himself from Clinton, losing his home state, and not being vigorouse enough in the fight over the Florida recount; the media gets some blame for unfairly portraying Gore as a liar and Bush as more substantial than he is/was.

Dubya was obviously a boob. And a jerk. Fine. But was that reason enough to vote for Gore? No. Some of us have principles that do not make it easy to vote the lesser of two evils. Gore had no intention of taking on the Drug Warriors; he had no intention of halting corporate welfare or mitigating corporate influence on the electoral process; he had no intention of making taxation more progressive; he had no intention of replacing dubious "free trade" agreements-- let's call them "Free-For-All trade agreements"-- with fair trade and the protection of middle class jobs.

It's easy to see now what a disaster George Bush has been for this country. But it was not so easy to see then what a disaster he would turn out to be. Progressives had no reason to suspect that terrorists would knock down the World Trade Center, that citizens and congress would subsequently rally behind dubya in such a way as to grant him the right and opportunity to wreck our economy, kill thousands of innocents abroad, rip up the Bill of Rights, and do the damage they've done to our environment and social safety net. And so on.

Had it not been for 911, dubya could not have done all that.

But should Ralph run again? I just can't support it. For the record: I am now ready to vote for the lesser of two evils.  ¶ 8:37 AM