With this, though late as hell:
The antiwar left is wrong: however mangled was the Bush road to war, it is a war for the values of our civilization. But the Bush conservatives are also wrong. It can't be won with an "idealism" that is selfish, greedy, arrogant, incapable of self-criticism and believing that all that matters is our will and power and nothing else.
…he gets as close to true center on the Iraq Invasion issue as he, and many other Americans, will ever get. I believe it's close enough o the center to allow people to see the flaws in this administration.
The Home Team
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I was actually at the Super Bowl. Yup. And I too was upset about the halftime show — but not just because of Janet Jackson's antics. After the show ended, I said to my wife: How can we present something to America and the world that is this frivolous and gross when we have 115,000 U.S. soldiers at war in Iraq, dying at one per day? I realize this is irrational — there's no rule that says the Super Bowl show must honor America's soldiers at war. But that halftime show has become a kind of national moment and the grotesque way it came out really captured what has bothered me most about how this war is being conducted: The whole burden is being borne by a small cadre of Americans — the soldiers, their families and reservists — and the rest of us are just sailing along, as if it has nothing to do with us.
And what bothers me even more is that this dichotomy is exactly what the Bush team wants. From the outset, it has adopted the view that this war will be handled by the Pentagon alone. We don't need the State Department and its ideas about nation building. We don't need the U.N. We don't need our traditional allies. And most of all, we don't need the public. The message from the White House has been: "You all just go about your business of being Americans, pursuing happiness, spending your tax cuts, enjoying the Super Bowl halftime show, buying a new Hummer, and leave this war to our volunteer Army. No sacrifices required, no new taxes to pay for this long-term endeavor, and no need to reduce our gasoline consumption, even though doing so would help take money away from the forces of Islamist intolerance that are killing our soldiers. No, we are so rich and so strong and so right, we can win this war without anyone other than the armed forces paying any price or bearing any burden."
This outlook is morally and strategically bankrupt. It is morally bankrupt because 1 percent of America is carrying the whole burden of this war. After the Super Bowl, I went to Tampa to visit Centcom headquarters and Gen. John Abizaid and his staff. They run the war in Iraq. I met many soldiers there, from the women serving as analysts in the intelligence center to the strategic planners just back from Baghdad, who had been separated for months from their families or knew comrades killed or wounded in Iraq.
Posted by P6 at February 8, 2004 10:26 AM
Trackback URL: http://www.niggerati.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/291
Comments