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Showing Original Post only (View all)Why this sudden push to rewrite history about the Iraq war? [View all]
Here we are, nearly a decade after the start of Shock n Awe, and the push is apparently on to rewrite history, to say that the people in this country were somehow tricked into war, or sold a bill of bad goods. That simply isn't true.
The plain truth of the matter is that most of the people in this country wanted to go to war with Iraq. They wanted to vent their rage about 911 on somebody in some large fashion. They wanted to go after that evil man Saddam who apparently ate babies and BBQ'ed puppies. They wanted to do something to assuage their hyper fear, a product of 911, and the best way they thought to do it was to drown it in blood.
We weren't tricked. There were millions of us speaking the truth at the time, out in the streets protesting, writing, broadcasting, demonstrating in every way we knew how the truth about the ongoing rush to war with Iraq. Not just here on DU, not just a relatively few anti-war activists, but literally millions around the world.
Commentators on various non-Fox networks were laying out the truth about Iraq. Writers were publishing everything from LTTE all the way up to full fledged books denouncing the build up to the Iraq war. We were informed, we knew what was going on. But the majority of folks in this country at the time decided that they have to vent their fear, rage and xenophobia upon some innocent country, and Iraq was the perfect target.
We had already engaged in military action with Iraq twelve years previous. Throughout the nineties all we heard about was how bad Iraq and Hussein was, thus building them up as some sort of international bogeyman. Never mind that Iraq was prostrate from our sanctions, never mind that we were doing thrice weekly bombing runs over Iraq all through Clinton's term, the Mighty Wurlitzer of government and corporate propaganda cranked out the hatred for twelve long years. Iraq was primed and ready to serve as the sacrificial goat to be laid on the altar of American's fear and rage.
But we weren't tricked, we weren't uninformed. What the majority of American people in this country did was to simply ignore the truth in favor of venting their rage and fear upon the innocents of Iraq. This isn't the fault of the media, this isn't the fault of Bush, this is the fault of every single American who turned off their centers of higher reason, and instead listened to their base emotions of fear and anger.
It happened here. I distinctly remember getting into debates with DUer's about going to war with Iraq. These people knew the truth, but wanted to go in anyway because Saddam was "evil".
It happened in Congress, a group of people who are the most informed on the planet decided to ignore their own good judgment and line up behind the President. The IWR(god, a long time since I used that acronym), got a large cushion of support from the Democrats, though not a majority(81 Dems voted for, 126 against). However in the Senate, that same grouped that streamed out onto the steps of the capital to publicly recite the Pledge of Allegiance after having just voted to institute the draconian Patriot Act, the majority of Democrats did indeed vote for the IWR(28 Yes, 22 No), including such folks as Biden, Clinton and Kerry. In fact there were debates for years on this board about whether or not to support those who supported the war. Some got primaried, some got promoted up the ladder.
None of those people were tricked, and neither was the American public. To try and rewrite history saying that we were tricked is a heinous crime. It is a cover up of an ugly fact, that Americans, in their rage and fear, reverted to their jingoistic, xenophobic roots, and gladly supported the killing of innocents. By trying to paper this over all we're doing is denying our nature as a country. Better the ugly truth be out there, so that we can examine it and, hopefully, overcome it. That will make for a better future for all.