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Fighting
the Long Defeat
April 18, 2003
By Joe Vecchio
I knew it was going to be easy, but hell, I never thought
it was going to be this easy. Baghdad, a city of five million
people, fell in a week. By rights, it should have taken months:
if Saddam had any brains at all, he would have secured Baghdad
with his elite troops and forced us to either bomb the city
completely into oblivion or try and take it street-to street.
But he didn't do that, in fact he didn't do much of anything.
In war games months before the invasion, the American general
who was playing "Iraq" managed to inflict a great deal of
damage on American troops using simple, low-tech techniques
that were readily available. He was so successful, the ones
running the games had to call a "do over" and resurrect US
soldiers from the grave. They had to do this in such extreme
ways that the general running Iraq finally threw up his hands
and retired from the field. This information was hardly a
secret: it had been printed in both British and American newspapers,
and Hussein had easy access to it. So why did he just ignore
it? The ease of the victory showcased both how stupid a military
leader he was and how much his threat was exaggerated by the
Bush regime.
But no matter how easy the victory, this "war" has set some
horrible precedents. Taken to a personal level, it means that,
if I felt threatened by anyone, that I not only have the right,
but the duty to take them out before they do the same to me.
It means that Don Ciccio, who killed six-year old Vito Andolini's
father, mother, and brother, had the right to have six-year
old Vito Andolini killed so that the boy wouldn't take vengeance
on him when he grew up (which of course young Vito did, though
when he did so his last name was Corleone, not Andolini. In
the eyes of the neoconservatives, Don Ciccio's only failure
was letting Vito get away). It also means that if someone
feels that I am a threat to them, they also have the right
to take me out. Conservatives love to use jungle analogies
to justify their sophistry: Every day an impala awakes on
the African plain and must run faster than the fastest lion
to survive. Every day a lion awakes on the African plain and
must run faster than the slowest impala to survive.
Even if that analogy were correct (it's not: lions are social
animals who work together, so are their enemies the hyenas),
is that the way we want to live? And is that the way we want
nations to behave? If this attack on Iraq was justified, then
it could be argued that so was 9/11: Osama bin Laden obviously
felt we were a threat to Islam, so he attacked us before we
could attack him. But unlike Saddam, bin Laden isn't stupid:
the destruction of the WTC was a spectacular moral victory
for him, but militarily meaningless, and I'm sure he knew
that. It could very well be that the attack produced the exact
result he wanted: the hardliners in the US felt free to wage
a massive war against the Middle East, and they began, to
Osama's great pleasure, with Iraq. Wherever he is, bin Laden
is laughing. He has no love for the former Iraqi dictator,
but by attacking the US he helped to get rid of him without
having to lift a finger. And the easy defeat of Iraq is making
Arabs seethe with fury over US hegemony. If the Bush regime
is as reactionary as Osama thinks they are, we'll go after
Syria next, and that might even unite "the Arab street" against
governments like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, overthrowing them
and replacing them with fundamentalist regimes of their own.
It's something he's wanted to do himself for years, but could
never have accomplished otherwise. And the Bush regime's belligerence
over the matter has angered even its allies, driving wedges
between countries who might otherwise unite against Al Qaeda.
The easy victory has also marginalized any opposition in
the United States, an opposition that may have been more patient,
that may have sought a more international solution to the
problems of terrorism, or that might have even found a way
to overcome the religious and social differences that separate
the East and the West, but there's little hope for that now.
Westerners are endangered in Arab countries, Arabs are endangered
here, and as long as this "patriotic fervor" continues, the
gulf between us will grow. This gives the hardliners on both
sides a ready-made political excuse to do anything they want
in the name of survival. In the West, endless wars will cover
up the corruption of corporate oligarchies and the slow, systematic
destruction of American freedoms. It will provide cover for
the removal of the economic safety nets that helped make this
country the economic and military powerhouse it is today.
It will give a blank check to the policies of a warmongering
President, giving him all the money he needs to battle every
new Saddan Hussein, which will bleed the US dry. In the East,
anger and resentment will force moderate Islamic regimes to
take harder and harder stances against their ow people. And
the lessening scope of international law will alienate one
country from another and see to it that peaceful solutions
are less and less considered, as nations pursue their own
versions of the Bush Doctrine.
But if this was Osama's intent, he's made a horrible mistake.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto understood
that all he had accomplished was to "awaken a sleeping giant."
After 9/11, similar analogies were made. But the United States
is no longer a sleeping giant, it's an unleashed dragon. It
won't be satisfied with Iraq, it will want more, and it's
defeat will be a long and slow one which could result in millions
of deaths, Christian and Muslim alike, the kind of war that
no one truly wins. All we can hope for is that, in the aftermath
of war, a new world will rise, if not a perfect one, then
at least a better one. To Osama, I say enjoy your accomplishments
while you can, they are meaningless. And to Mr. Bush and the
members of his regime who believe that the ease of Iraq justifies
the wars to come, I say enjoy the short victories that lie
ahead, because the long defeat is what awaits you.
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