Righteous Indignation

James Wolcott comes through with a couple of good posts; the first, following up on a DailyKos piece that lays blame for the Iraq debacle where it's due: squarely on Bush.

I had Fox News on earlier today; two Senators, one Democrat and one Repub, were discussing the Mosul massacre as the camera showed the wounded being deplaned in Germany. The Democrat Senator, whose name I didn't catch, was discussing the lack of post-invasion planning and the resultant miseries, but he felt compelled to inject, "I'm not mad at President Bush, but--"

"I'm not mad at President Bush."

Why the f not?

I recognize that most elected Democrats, stunned by the election results and feeling the need to sound responsible on such a tragic occasion, feel compelled to adopt this more-in-sorrow-than-anger tone that was one of Tom Daschle's less attractive traits. But look what good it did Daschle shaking his head with weary regret over the latest Republican outrage--he was still vilified as some sort of rabid obstructionist.

Republicans belch fire all the time without suffering repercussions, yet Democrats behave like some meek choir.

Couldn't we have at least one irresponsible, intemperate off the reservation loose cannon willing to say he is "mad" at Bush, indeed is furious with the whole lying lot of them (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz...the list goes on and on)? Because this engulfing fiasco is their fault, and the fault of those unwilling to stand up to them in the first place.

Wolcott's other post cites the latest from William S. Lind--short version: like Stalingrad, Fallujah will be remembered as a tactical victory but strategic defeat for the invaders--Lind goes on to note Patrick Cockburn saw the potential for problems in Mosul right away. Fallujah, in this case, was like the wasp in the car that you swat at, only to find yourself spinning out of control before driving headlong into the alligator pond...

Wolcott concludes by noting (via Steve Gilliard) the same Times article I referenced below:

That was also the message of a front-page piece in the NY Times today, which Steve Gilliard takes apart with his skilled-mechanic hands. One of the advantages of living through enough history is that you hear the same rationalizations and excuses return like a bad melody. During Vietnam a point was reached in which the press and the public, which had supported the war for years during the escalation, recognized it wasn't working, we weren't going to win, and that the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train. And yet--we couldn't "bug out," "cut and run," choose your own vernacular phrase. Why? Because America would lose face and stature in the world. Because our enemies (then, the Communists) would be emboldened. And, this was the clincher moral argument, because it would mean that those who died in Vietnam had died in vain.

We're hearing some of that now, and we'll hear more of it ahead. But face it, those troops in Vietnam did die in vain, as did the Marines who died in the barracks in Beirut, as do most of the men and women who die in war. Most wars are unnecessary, waged on the basis of lies, power, and fear; to justify the unnecessary deaths, the funeral services float the soft consolation that the body lying in the flag-draped coffin died for Peace, or Democracy, or the Good of the Country. When often they died because too many fools wouldn't admit they had made a ghastly mistake and kept perpetuating that mistake even after they and all the world recognized the mission was futile. How many more soldiers and civilians are going to die in vain in Iraq to prove that those who died before them didn't die in vain?