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How we get into wars
posted Saturday, 10 February 2007
Last night, thanks to my own forgetfulness (I brought my laptop, forgot my charger), I was using my girlfriend's computer to write a blog entry. For some reason, whoever designed the IBM ThinkPad thought it would be a good idea to put a "page back" button (because clicking on the back button on your browser is apparently too much work). Well, okay, if you want to put in a button to make us even lazier than we already are, that's fine, but could you please not put it on your small keyboard sandwiched in between the shift, control, and arrow buttons, where it's likely to be accidentally tapped in the normal process of typing, say when you're writing an e-mail or a blog? Say, twice on the same entry? I was so frustrated last night that I couldn't re-write the entry. Lousy school-provided-for-free laptop....
My intention last night was to blog about this story: "Report says Pentagon manipulated intel," which is short-hand for saying that Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq and cooked up the evidence to convince the American people to go. Oh, of course, there's no proof that Bush or Cheney or anyone with any real power "sexed up" the intel (and ignored the stronger evidence that their claims were false), and in fact the article points out that there's nothing illegal here. There's a solid shroud of plausible deniability here to shield the administration, but I think we all know that it wasn't some flunky in the Pentagon who was hell-bent on sending troops into Iraq.
Let's also face another fact--this is nothing new. James K. Polk got us into the Mexican-American war with assertions that Mexicans had crossed into America and killed Americans--when exactly the opposite had in fact occurred. There exists good evidence to back the claim that FDR provoked war with Japan (and there's even some to suggest that we had foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor, but that's another, albeit related, story) so that we would get into a war that the American public did not want to be in. And can anyone say "Gulf of Tonkin"?
So Bush has ample precedent for lying to the American public (sorry, I meant "getting the Pentagon to lie for him), but if pretty well all of the ostensible reasons given to the public as justification are crap, what's the real reason? Most people look back on WWII and say that, even if the American public wasn't for a war, we needed to be in it, that the President knew what was best for us and had to get us to do the right thing by any means necessary. Polk's war was a blatant land-grab in the spirit of Manifest Destiny. We can look back on it now and say it was unethical, but just like we're not giving the land back to the Native Americans, we're not giving Texas or California back to the Mexicans. Vietnam, on the other hand, totally set the standard for unethical and unsuccessful wars we shouldn't have gotten into.
So how will history judge Mr. Bush's war? I guess that will depend on exactly what it is that we don't know that he does. Are we, the American people, too dumb or just too good to have gone into Iraq if we knew the real reasons?
My intention last night was to blog about this story: "Report says Pentagon manipulated intel," which is short-hand for saying that Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq and cooked up the evidence to convince the American people to go. Oh, of course, there's no proof that Bush or Cheney or anyone with any real power "sexed up" the intel (and ignored the stronger evidence that their claims were false), and in fact the article points out that there's nothing illegal here. There's a solid shroud of plausible deniability here to shield the administration, but I think we all know that it wasn't some flunky in the Pentagon who was hell-bent on sending troops into Iraq.
Let's also face another fact--this is nothing new. James K. Polk got us into the Mexican-American war with assertions that Mexicans had crossed into America and killed Americans--when exactly the opposite had in fact occurred. There exists good evidence to back the claim that FDR provoked war with Japan (and there's even some to suggest that we had foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor, but that's another, albeit related, story) so that we would get into a war that the American public did not want to be in. And can anyone say "Gulf of Tonkin"?
So Bush has ample precedent for lying to the American public (sorry, I meant "getting the Pentagon to lie for him), but if pretty well all of the ostensible reasons given to the public as justification are crap, what's the real reason? Most people look back on WWII and say that, even if the American public wasn't for a war, we needed to be in it, that the President knew what was best for us and had to get us to do the right thing by any means necessary. Polk's war was a blatant land-grab in the spirit of Manifest Destiny. We can look back on it now and say it was unethical, but just like we're not giving the land back to the Native Americans, we're not giving Texas or California back to the Mexicans. Vietnam, on the other hand, totally set the standard for unethical and unsuccessful wars we shouldn't have gotten into.
So how will history judge Mr. Bush's war? I guess that will depend on exactly what it is that we don't know that he does. Are we, the American people, too dumb or just too good to have gone into Iraq if we knew the real reasons?
Your comments, as always, are most welcome. (3)