"There Seems to be a Disconnect"

by paradox

Thus said proxy Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malki yesterday, objecting to an American idea of leveling Sadr City (slum of Baghdad) to total rubble in order to chase the terrorists out. This poor fool, despised as an imperialist plant and hiding in the green zone--a sentence of death when the Americans leave if there ever was one--still, at least, had enough honor for his country to object to its destruction.

Reading the story I thought it was a good thing for al-Malki that Douglas MacArthur wasn’t around—faced with the city of Manila full of enemy Japanese MacArthur pulled up hundreds of howitzers and leveled every square foot to complete rubble, nothing was above three feet on when he was done.

At least al-Malki will be spared seeing Baghdad shelled with white phosphorous and criminally sniped, as happened to Falluja. Out of sight from the media the US Army did Doug proud at least in spirit, for reducing every square inch to shelled destruction wasn’t in the specs this time. Maybe next year.

Al-Malki can be completely forgiven for his plaintive Hirohito moment, for disconnect is the whole mental state of the war crime known as the Iraq war. The preventive war, remember? Yeah we blew up those children—their country might have done something to us. To keep the peace we’ll bomb the shit out of Baghdad.

I’m grimly amused to remember the time Laura Bush went to Turkey and spouted this evil “disconnect” to an activist group of very well educated, poised Turkish women. They were incredulous, “insulted” that anyone would think they’d swallow such stupid, dangerous bullshit.

The Iraq war has always been an utter moral disaster, a monstrous idea from the instant of its inception. Killing humans for what they might do is a crime, the filth and stench from this instance more monstrous than ever because we lied about what the Iraqis had the capability of possibly doing!

Yet to this day George Bush insists killing Iraqis spreads the cause of freedom and democracy. If dead kids, their limbs blown off in the rubble of American streets, were the result of spreading “freedom” and “democracy” would American parents accept it? Jesus, why can’t we see who we’ve become?

Since this crime of vast national scale has started and turned into an utter conflagration of tactical failure in every possible way (“success” means greatly enabling Iran) more and more calls have gone out for “re-deployment.”

We should have left the month McKay reported we were filthy liars about wmd—what tiny shred of moral justification for the war vanished and all has been a horrifying occupation since. The United States needs to get the hell out of Iraq as soon as fucking possible and pray the world will ever trust and respect us again.

It all seems so screamingly obvious I wonder why I feel the need to write it, yet no one ever seems to acknowledge the epic disconnect of the American 21st century: preventive war.

As we writhe in pain, shame and horror at the daily carnage in Iraq and mourn our soldiers, still at this hour being killed and maimed, for the love of God let us never forget how criminally stupid preventive war was and is, and how horribly wrong all the glib predictions of applied violence can be. Our country is also in rogue criminal status on the world stage, even though everyone is too polite to say it.

Yeah, Prime Minister Nouri al-Malki, there seems to be a disconnect. I know what you mean.