The Vacuum of the Moment

What I find truly amazing in John McCain's revisionism regarding the "surge" and his support for it, is the sadly transparent effort to ignore the main realities of Iraq. McCain, according to the AP, claimed today (Friday, July 25, 2008) that, had the "surge" not been undertaken, we would have had "U.S. forces retreating under fire, the Iraqi army collapsing, civilian casualties increasing dramatically, al-Qaida killing cooperative Sunni sheiks and finding safe havens to train fighters and launch attacks on Americans, and civil war, genocide and a wider conflict."

"Above all, America would have been humiliated and weakened," McCain said. "Terrorists would have seen our defeat as evidence America lacked the resolve to defeat them. As Iraq descended into chaos, other countries in the Middle East would have come to the aid of their favored factions, and the entire region might have erupted in war."

What McCain conveniently ignores is that none of the outcomes that he predicts – including the need for the surge itself - would have, or could have existed had we not embarked on this exercise in political adventurism in the first place. Had we focused our efforts and resources on Afghanistan, for instance, it is possible that not only would we not have had to deal with al-Qaida in Iraq, but would possibly no longer be dealing with al-Qaida at all – some 7 years after the attacks of 09/11/2001.

The "surge" was a well executed effort to rescue a botched and completely unnecessary mission. To say what McCain says now, to claim some sort of moral superiority in having supported that rescue mission, is very much like claiming that cleaning up the poor drunk girl, after the you and your fraternity brothers pulled a train on her, is an act of chivalry.

Maybe, but only in the vacuum of the moment.

A Fitting Memorial

Although it is probably premature, I have an idea for the memorial to the dead of the Iraq invasion and occupation, what some in the US call a war. In presenting this idea I am proposing a return to the simplicity of the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial, a black slash in the earth that symbolized the wounds that the war had caused in our country. My idea is a bit less abstract however.

Picture this: A statue of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, standing in their traditional hands clasped and raised pose from the 2000 Convention. Carved into and all over the bodies of the two are the names of those killed in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The goal of the memorial is twofold. The first, obviously, is to make note of those who were killed. The second, however, is to make clear that each and every one of those deaths is the result of the actions and decisions of these two men.

Some might think it crass to use the deaths of these men and women to make a political point. To which I can only ask, why is it any more crass to make political use of these deaths than to have had them caused in the first place by politics; cynical political adventurism not seen in this country since the President Polk provoked the Mexican War in 1846?

Debate may rage about whether or not Bush and Cheney consciously or intentionally lied, but there is and can be no debate concerning the purely political nature of the incursion, its mishandling and the general incompetence in its execution, and the disastrous effects that it has had upon US policy in the Middle East and elsewhere, most important, the effort - the military intervention at least reasonably justified by the events of 9/11/01 – to quell Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

On a basic level all war is political, and each war is built upon the politics of the wars preceding it. But this war is the first in more than a century that has been predicated upon nothing but politics. This war arose from the neoconservative vision of a Pax Americana, of a hegemony of the "American way of Life" based upon the insertion of American style republicanism into a region with no precedent – historical or cultural – for such a political mechanism. Every person killed in Iraq has died in service to that political vision – regardless of the reasons that those people themselves may have agreed go there.

A memorial such as I describe would serve as a message to every politician as they contemplate making political wars in the future: you will not be able to hide from the damage that you will cause, the names of the dead will be engraved on your legacy.

An advantage of the structure of the memorial is that, should McCain be elected in November, and realize his vision of a new hundred year war, his likeness, with the deaths attributable to him engraved upon him, can be added.