Have We Forgotten About Iraq?

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Dick Price
Publisher
LA Progressive

Now slogging through its sixth bloody year, America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq is much on my mind this Saturday afternoon. On the television in the next room, the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee ponders the Florida and Michigan delegations, just now reaching its compromise.

Ten days ago, Sharon and I attended an unsettling veterans’ issues session at our Northeast Democratic Club led by April Fitzsimmons, an actress, writer, and Air Force veteran, who reported in part on the alarming levels of sexual abuse America’s service women are suffering at the hands of their fellow soldiers. Then last weekend, we were joined by my daughter Linnea at the Arlington West Memorial Day observances on the beach in Santa Monica, where one antiwar leader after another called in stirring tones for the end of the Iraq War. Finally, last night we joined a small group of like-minded people in Echo Park in a fledgling effort to start a Progressive Democrats of America chapter in downtown Los Angeles, where our thoughts turned to ending the war as well.

In each case, our heads nodded as speakers we like and admire shared sentiments about ending the Iraq War. And yet, as I sit here listening to the delegates discussion wind down, I can’t shake the feeling that all the antiwar speeches and demonstrations—no matter how well-reasoned and heartfelt—will not amount to a hill of beans.

America’s forces for empire have learned their lessons once again and made their adjustments with better managers leading the war effort, and the country’s attention has shifted to gas prices and foreclosures.

Lessons America Won’t Learn

Coming out of my generation’s war—the Vietnam War—America could have learned to avoid repeating history with the kind of fraudulent, empire-building adventuring we’ve seen repeated in Iraq.

Instead, the warmongering crowd that holds such sway in American politics decade after decade learned rather how to snooker public opinion by keeping the returning caskets out of sight and war correspondents safely leashed, how to pervert the national guard and army reserve system to avoid instituting an unpopular and certainly war-ending draft, how to hide behind our soldiers’ sacrifices to fend off criticism of foolhardy policies, how to make political opponents bite their tongues even when they know what they want to say is true and that most Americans would support them. (See this earlier article.)