USA Today reports
the Bush administration will ask for $100 billion to cover the latest
"off-budget" costs of the Iraq war, and notes the response of Senator Lindsay
Graham (R-S.C.):
"I hope they ask for something big. Look, this is a test of wills. We need to
show our enemies that we are not going to do this on the cheap."
Do the Bushies have the "will" to bankrupt the country? We shouldn't doubt
it. As Tony
Blankley approvingly noted during the presidential election campaign, it is the
Republicans who have taken up the old Jack
Kennedy trope of "pay any price, bear any burden" – including the
burden of 1,300-plus-and-counting American deaths, over
10,000 severely wounded, and as many as 100,000
dead Iraqis. Blankley and the Bushies willingly court financial and moral
bankruptcy in support of a war in which they have invested much. When they say "any
price," they mean it.
The costs of this war have been higher than anyone but its bitterest opponents ever imagined:
certainly the American people were lied to when they were promised a "cakewalk" by
prominent interventionists. But hardly anyone expected it to turn into a death march.
Yet that is precisely what it is becoming: insurgents killed the governor
of Baghdad and nine others in a wave
of violence that engulfed Iraq Tuesday morning. At the same time, a bomb exploded
outside Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's election headquarters, and a prominent Iraqi general
opined that the insurgency may number as many as 200,000.
To top it all off, the "president" of Iraq was soon declaring that the election
may have to be postponed.
American casualties are skyrocketing while the prospects for success plummet, and where it
will all end nobody knows – although a recent pronouncement by the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI)
might give us some clue.
The shadowy Islamic Army is one
of three guerrilla groups that recently declared war on the democratic process in Iraq,
stating that anyone who participated in the upcoming elections would be a legitimate
target, and announcing, furthermore, that democracy is "un-Islamic."
Their capture
of French journalists, and subsequent declaration that France is the "enemy" of Muslims,
must've taken this
guy by surprise, but then the IAI seems to specialize in targeting Europeans: in
August, the Islamic Army took credit for the killing
of an Italian journalist, and they went after the Macedonians
in October.
But we may be seeing a shift in their tactics, because now it looks like they're coming
after us. The National Post of Canada, citing a statement posted on the
group's Web site, reports:
"'This year 'will bring woes on America. The mujahedeen [holy
warriors] have prepared big surprises for your sons outside America and a big surprise for
you inside America,' said the statement, the authenticity of which could not be confirmed.
The mujahedeen 'will take the battle from inside our country [Iraq] to yours. We address
you after you finished celebrating the new year, hoping that you are no longer drunk....
We will give American civilians a taste of what civilians in our country go
through.'"
I would emphasize the importance of the Post's caveat on the authenticity issue,
but, with that in mind, the IAI statement, framed as "a message to the American
people," has the ring of truth about it, once you get past the insults and the
gloating:
"The statement, which described Americans as 'uncivilized' and 'ignorant,'
claimed that 'the whole world' hates the United States. 'Are you aware that the number of
those who support striking America on its own turf has greatly increased? Last year was a
picnic for your soldiers [in Iraq]. The year 2005 will witness a quantitative and
qualitative change in the operations against your army, which will go down in
history.'"
It is certainly true that anti-Americanism is on the rise, and not
only in Muslim lands. But that dig about increasing support for terrorist attacks on
American soil is what really chills the bones, because there appears to be some truth to it. A
recent Zogby
poll of Arab countries had Osama bin Laden tied with Saddam Hussein for fourth place
as most admired world leader. The Arabs' central grievance against the U.S. used to be our
unconditional support for Israel's disgraceful treatment of the Palestinians; now it is
Iraq. In Egypt, disapproval of U.S. policy approaches 100
percent. The most deadly serious critique of the Iraq war and its consequences –
advanced most eloquently by former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer – seems to have
been confirmed: it is a boon for bin
Laden, whose unvarying target has always been the continental United States.
The key argument for the war, repeated endlessly by the Bush camp, is:
"We are
fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our
own streets, in our own cities."
But what if occupying Iraq and fighting the insurgency means we will almost certainly
have to fight them on our own streets, in our own cities? Who will guarantee the IAI's
statement is just an idle boast? Surely not the U.S. government, which presided over the
great "intelligence failure"
that led to 9/11.
And I have another question: are we safer, today, than we were before the invasion of
Iraq? Clearly the answer is an emphatic no. Yet the safety issue was the War
Party's main argument from the beginning. Rising antiwar sentiment is rooted in the
growing realization that this war has made us less safe in our own country.
Americans must live in a constant state of color-coded
alerts, calculating the risks and benefits of every airline flight, surrendering what's
left of their civil
liberties on account of the increased danger, and all for the sake of a grandiose
ideological vision that has nothing to do with protecting Americans at home or advancing
our legitimate interests overseas. Sounds like a bad deal to me.
What is it that makes it worth it to these ideologues, of both parties, who would not
only bankrupt the country and drag us into a bottomless quagmire, but also put us all
– every American, and not just those who have enlisted in the military – in
mortal danger?
We are supposed to take comfort in the grand proclamations of war-crazed neocons like Max Boot, who
hail the triumphant procession of democratic success from Iraq to Ukraine (and, they hope,
Iran). Somehow, I'm not consoled. Is the Golden Gate Bridge or Chicago's Sears Tower worth
an election in Iraq where the government can't even announce the names of the candidates
for "security reasons"?
No one should have the right to authorize such a transaction. Yet that is precisely what
our government has done.
We dump another $100 billion into Iraq, step up the war effort, and the consequences
ripple outward. For that price, we have bought ourselves a worldwide Islamic insurgency
with the means to strike us where we live. Having decided to take on a billion-plus
Muslims, and having gone so far as to declare the onset of World War IV, the
least one can expect is a repeat of 9/11 – or worse. Scheuer thinks it's almost
inevitable, and in my darker moods I tend to concur.
The hubris of the empire-builders is such that they have lost sight of the one reason
why Americans put up with their government. It's because they believe, perhaps naively,
that the primary function of government is to protect them from foreign invaders, and
defend their legitimate interests. The American people know government is a racket. Just
as long as it affords them some measure of real protection, however, they are generally
willing – nay, all too eager – to overlook the graft, corruption, power-lust,
and worse that hides behind the mask of "public service." But once the illusion
of safety is dispelled by a tsunami-like disaster, either natural or man-made, the
inherent American distrust of government power, supposedly eradicated by the shock of
9/11, will return with a vengeance. It is often said as if it were a self-evident truth
that another terrorist attack on American soil would galvanize the country behind the War
Party, yet such a reaction is very far from foreordained. The United States military, for
all the billions we lavish on it, is desperately trying to ensure the security of
Baghdad's "Green Zone" – but what about the American Zone?
God forbid we should ever emerge from the smoking wreckage of another 9/11 asking that
question. Which is why an answer is urgently required.
Justin Raimondo is Editorial Director
of AntiWar.Com.
He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.
Justin Raimondo may be contacted at egarris@antiwar.com
Published in the January 5, 2005 issue of Ether Zone
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