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A CRIME IS ALWAYS A CRIME, ADMITTED TO OR NOT:Hero Blues: Liberals Line Up With MilitarismThe Iraq war is a crime; stop committing the crime.Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Yes, the gal I got
I swear she's the screaming end She wants me to be a hero So she can tell all her friends -- Bob Dylan, "Hero Blues" The mainstream liberal acquiescence in Obama's Terror War "continuity" removes one of the few remaining bulwarks to the corrosive, witless and ultimately suicidal militarism that plagues us. It helps smooth the way for more disasters: more war, more hatred, more corruption, more tyranny, more pointless suffering, ruin, poverty and death.
Joan Walsh gives us another bravura performance in a new episode of what will apparently be a very long-running show, "Deep in the Tank for Obama."
In her latest outing, Walsh is transported near to tears by images of the president greeting soldiers during his unannounced visit to Iraq. (Yes, even though the "surge" has been "a success beyond our wildest dreams," as Obama instructed us last year, American leaders still have to creep into the "liberated" land like a thief in the night.) In worshipful tones that one might have heard directed at the president at any point in the previous eight years from, say, National Review Online or Pajamas Media, Walsh gawps in awe at the bonding of the legions with their imperator:
Of course, we saw these same scenes -- boisterous, happy soldiers greeting the president with hugs and cheers -- played out over and over during Bush's term, on his every visit to Iraq. Even the infamous, much-derided "turkee" trip early in the war was an identically joyous scene for those on the ground in Baghdad. Yet one strains to recall Walsh ever thrilling to the sight of a president's personal rapport with the occupation troops in those days, or hearing her hopes that we could all put aside partisan feelings and simply appreciate these moving, patriotic moments, no matter our ideology. No, when the troops gave Bush a rousing "hoo-ah" and "leaned in for hugs" and a quick personal word which the president somehow managed to impart to so many so quickly that you could hardly imagine it, Walsh and other lib-progs were rightly unimpressed. Such brief, emotional scenes did not change the fact that the war was a murderous, criminal enterprise, and that the soldiers in Iraq were not (and are not) "fighting and dying for their country" but were (and are) instead being used as cannon fodder in an unprovoked act of aggression that had been deeply harmful to their country, and to the entire world as well. But this sort kind of incisive, cold-eyed analysis is no longer wanted, now that one of "ours" is in the White House. II. Of course, this is all just surface chatter -- the peccadilloes of partisanship, the bemusing spectacle of political leopards changing, or at least re-ordering, their spots. It's not really important in itself. But there is a more sinister side to such hero-gazing. In the course of her encomium, Walsh applauds Obama's recourse to one of the most morally hideous tropes of our time:
This is the line that national Democrats such as Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the gaggle of gormless bagmen, blue dogs and corporate shills in Congress have been pushing for years. The American invasion itself was "an extraordinary achievement," as Obama had the shameless brass to announce in Baghdad this week. "You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country." And now it's up to these ungrateful, lazy, shiftless creatures to take advantage of the magnificent gift America has given them -- or else. The moral depravity of this stance is breathtaking. Invade a country for no reason, kill a million of its people, drive four million into exile, destroy its infrastructure, plunge it into civil war, abet its "ethnic cleansing," loot its wealth, put it in the hands of religious extremists, unleash disease, poverty and social breakdown: this is an "extraordinary achievement," says the progressive paladin. And now the Iraqis must "take responsibility" for the hell on earth created by their invaders. I find this wicked arrogance almost beyond description. Fortunately, Arthur Silber has limned it well, with his usual power and eloquence, and I want to quote him at length on this subject, because it bears repeating. But you should go to the original for the many links he provides to buttress and expand the piece. From Silber:
This has also been my position for years (here, for instance): The Iraq war is a crime; stop committing the crime, get out immediately, pay massive reparations for the evil you have done -- and be prepared to take in the horde of refugees who will flee the harsh and broken regime you have created in the ruins of the country you have destroyed. For you -- you -- are responsible for them now. (For more on what we have created with our "extraordinary achievement" in Iraq, see here, here, here and here.) Silber goes on:
And from this blindness comes a new influx of support for America's murderous, militarist Terror Wars, as Justin Raimondo reports in his aptly-titled "Progressive Warmongers" [see original for links]:
Yes, it's somewhat amusing to watch liberal lions and lionesses mirroring the sycophancy that their partisan counterparts once lavished on Bush: an interesting, instructive foible of the political animal when it comes within the proximity of power. But it also has a far more serious, more dangerous side. The mainstream liberal acquiescence in Obama's Terror War "continuity" removes one of the few remaining bulwarks to the corrosive, witless and ultimately suicidal militarism that plagues us. It helps smooth the way for more disasters: more war, more hatred, more corruption, more tyranny, more pointless suffering, ruin, poverty and death. To paraphrase their own paladin, it's time for liberals and progressives to "start putting more responsibility" on themselves, to see more clearly the reality in front of them -- just as they always urged the blind followers of the last wielder of imperial power to do -- and acknowledge the horrific consequences of the policies they are now so mindlessly and emotionally supporting.
You need a different kind of man, babe
You need Napoleon Bonee-parte ![]() This column is republished here with the permission of the author. Copyright © 2009 The Baltimore News Network. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own. This story was published on April 9, 2009. |
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