nonc0mpliant

yesterday while driving home and listening to the local NPR station talk about the car bombings which killed more than 200 Iraqis, it dawned on me. the Bush regime has wasted possibly the most historically advantageous opportunity of our modern era. why?

1. the story starts with 9/11 , sort of. after 9/11 i know all of us were inundated with images of arabs celebrating and burning effigies in the street, but the real behind-the-scenes story was the support of governments and peoples the world over. yes, we the people of the u.s.a. were given a single moment to change how the world saw us. yes, W Bush had the chance to show the world that we are not the tyrannical empire they said we were. W. could have embraced the world community and its overwhelming empathy in the aftermath of 9/11.

But that opportunity was wasted by invading Iraq.

2. the story does have some roots in the pre-9/11 world (whatever the hell that means) also. you see, before we invaded iraq W bush and his neo-con cronies kept telling us, “saddam hussein and al-qaeda are in cahoots with each other.” that of course turned out to be untrue, which any dumb ass could have figured out since Saddam was a rabid secularist and Osama and his gang are fucking religious wackos. Does this make sense to any one? as far as I can tell, the Al-Qaeda boys even funded some activities against saddam’s regime.

the point being that if the War on Terror was actually something w. bush wanted to win, he sure made one stupid fucking decision to eradicate a man that was probably helping to keep the region from descending into even more religious fanaticism.

But that opportunity was wasted by invading Iraq.

3. even after the bone-headed move of invading iraq, the iraqi people should have been our most staunch and powerful ally. you want to win a war of hearts and minds? then for god fucking sake, you have to learn to recognize the signs of an opening when they happen.

just think, we had just invaded this wayward country because of terrorism. even the people of the former Baathist regime had been turning on Saddam. everyone wanted something new, something free, something better. it was this attitude which should have been nourished, it was the only chance we had of empowering these people to help us fight the religious nut-jobs of the world.

do you think these people did not see this coming? do you think that this is what the sunnis, or shiites or kurds wanted? NO. jesus, all they wanted was a change, an improvement, more security in their lives–the same things human beings want the world over. george w. had been given millions of people on a silver platter, people that did not support Osama and al-qaeda, people that wanted nothing more than to hope that we would help.

But, for whatever reason or motivation, the bush plan has failed. the country is still in ruins with very little running water (much less potable), hardly any electricity and an economy that hardly exists outside of the oil fields (articles here, here and here).

is this how you win hearts and minds? is this how you convince and empower a whole country of people to resist the outside influence of hate, despair and criminality? all the iraqis wanted after the invasion was to get back to living some semblance of an ordinary life; they did not want the nosedive crash-and-burn scenario they are now stuck in.

if we had done things right, if we had used the vast resources at our disposal in a more intelligent and compassionate way, we could have done great things for the people of iraq. that would have benefited us in ways that are now unimaginable. we would have gained one of the best allies one could hope for, but instead we have this mess.

’nuff said?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 12:44 pm and is filed under politics, daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.