You're Getting Freedom Fries with That Whether You Want Them or Not!

And then a year from Monday / Everything I said came true... - John Cale

I wish I was unable to say (along with most of the world's population, in fact), "I told you so." I wish I'd been dead wrong in claiming that the US military action in (politeness-speak for "bombing the fuck out of") Iraq would destabilize the region and encourage the growth of fundamentalism and sow seeds of terrorism. I wish I'd been utterly mistaken in cynically observing that anti-government Republicans were the last folks likely to provide for an actual government in Iraq after they destroyed the one that was there (and I wish I didn't always need to make clear that such a statement does not mean I'm a member of the Saddam Hussein fan club). Further: I wish that I hadn't been right in claiming, along with many others, that George W. Bush was grossly unsuited to manage anything more important than a laundromat.

And I wish I had whatever strange sort of worldview it is that imagines that, after all but flipping off the UN and the entire rest of the world (save our everpresent lickspittle Mr. Blair, and assorted other eager toadies succumbing to what amounted to bribes to join Our Side), somehow now that the government is finally realizing the extent of its folly and incompetence in Iraq, the world will be so happy to help us out - on our terms, of course. Or spectacles of that most incredibly rosy hue that allow those in power to have believed that, despite a decade-long embargo of even medical supplies that has left hundreds of thousands dead, despite nearly yearly bombing runs during that same decade, somehow, the people of Iraq would turn to us with love in their hearts.

But even then, I doubt I'd be capable of the mental (not to say ethical) gymnastics that allows me to say, straightfaced, that since most Americans did believe what are now unquestionably proven to be lies about the infamous WMDs, even though we haven't found them (even though we haven't really looked for them - either because we don't care, or because we know they're not there), the war is necessary to keep faith with the American people. Oh, sorry - "was necessary": what with more soldiers having been killed since the war's end than during the war, I got confused for a moment.

Or maybe that wouldn't be necessary: maybe all that would have been necessary is either a "patriotic" sense of duty (Colin Powell, providing what the press was pleased to fawn all over as "incontrovertible" evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, having described the documents beforehand as "bullshit") or a knee-quaking fear that someone, somewhere might disapprove of my thoughts and so, playing it safe, going with the flow, not rocking the boat, I let the lies, powerplays, paranoia, and utter sense of contempt for every principle of democracy, justice, or civilization just glide right by me (nearly every Democrat), since, hey, didn't some black basketball player rape a white woman or something? Let's watch that channel instead.

But then I remember that John Cale song has a corpse in the middle of it, doesn't it. Sore loser.