Four Noir Years

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the start of the quagmire we lovingly call the war on Iraq. Bush, the Lesser, with Cheney's hand up his ass working his mouth, gave the obligatory anniversary speech and tried to scare the shit out of us again.

"It can be tempting to ... conclude our best option is to pack up and go home ... but I believe the consequences for American security would be devastating."

More tellingly, he also said: "At this point in the war, our most important mission is helping the Iraqis secure their capital." OMG!, we have been at this clusterfuck for four years and we still haven't even secured the capital! Why does anyone believe involvement for one more minute is to our advantage?

These past four years have indeed been some of the darkest (hence the clever "noir" pun) in our history. Being old, I remember the very difficult times during the Vietnam war. One thing we had then that is missing now is an active draft, so we do not now have as active an antiwar protest movement as we did then because most people are not directly involved. However, even without that integral piece, the American public can not stand for this much longer. Surely, the citizenry will mobilize against this in greater numbers if we do not get out of Iraq. And if we begin military action against Iran, a revolution must be organized.

Let's imagine what we could have done in the immediately preceding four years that would have been preferable to invading Iraq:

• Almost anything (much too easy and glib, but true).
• Building on the unprecedented sympathy for the U.S. after 9/11 and the almost unanimous global support for effective action by the major nations of the world, the U.S. could have organized a cohesive group of major nations and the nations in the Middle East to effectively deal with the radical fringe that begets most of the terrorist actions. This could have been done by keeping the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the Muslim community that truly deplored and were horrified by the actions of the 9/11 terrorists. National consensus and the treating of the part of the Muslim community that had sympathy for us as partners rather than enemies would have done that. Let's face this realistically. You can't declare a "war on terror". Terror is a tactic, not an opponent. The advocates for this tactic generally arise from the citizenry. We will never have enough troops or police or be able to snoop on enough e-mails or phone calls or go through enough financial records to be even marginally effective against most such terrorists. A much more effective way would be for the vast majority of the citizenry from which such terrorists arise to be sympathetic to non-violent actions and to fail to provide the recruitment base and the haven for the terrorists. The only way for us to significantly improve our effectiveness against terrorists is to stop creating them by our inflammatory actions and make them so marginalized by their own community that they will be shunned and turned in by their friends and neighbors. The last four years has made them heroes and martyrs. You can't invade a sovereign country and destroy the fabric of its society and expect much cooperation from its people.
• Left Saddam Hussein in place and applied pressure through the consortium of nations to cause a regime change. He was effectively disarmed and was in a hold down mode through the use of the no-fly zones and the U.N. inspectors. It is unlikely that he would still be in power today if we had applied pressure like this. And we would not have paid the horrendous price in people and resources and squandered sympathy. Even if Saddam was still ostensibly in power today, we would be substantially better off and the Iraqis would be better off and capable of dealing with their own problems. We can not justify invading Iraq merely because Saddam was a dick. Following that theory would lead to the invasion of half the countries on the planet, starting with our own.
• Stabilized and fortified Afghanistan. Found Osama bin Laden and removed the terrorist training camps.
• Use the resources we squandered in Iraq to find better ways to secure our cities, ports, chemical facilities, infrastructure, etc. than we have done.
• Not eliminating the cornerstones of our own democracy while giving lip service to establishing it in other countries.
• Avoiding the politicizing of everything by the installation of cronies in agencies, courts, law enforcement, etc. Requiring something more than political allegiance as a qualification for appointment would have been a nice change.

If this were truly an effective pun, I could state that the "noir" years are coming to an end with a luminesence at the terminus of the underground labryinth. However, that tunnel seems just too freaking long and I'm afraid that by the time we reach the end, it will have all caved in.