With the disastrous fools errand in Iraq launched by the delusional Chimperator Bush and the evil Emperor Palpatine Cheney now officially over - except, of course for (i) the families of the roughly 4,500 service members whose lives were thrown away to satisfy the Chimperator's hubris and Cheney's greed, (ii) those service members who serviced but are grievously maimed, and (iii) Iraqis who lost loved ones or were left maimed - the question looms as to how quickly the GOP will try to re-write history to present the disaster as a triumph. I think we all know that this will happen and it is important that the effort not succeed lest America again find itself led into war based on lies and a mindset that wrongly believes America is never wrong. As the saying goes, those who don't know true history are doomed to repeat it. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this question and makes some interesting conjectures. Here are some highlights:
Recall the moment in Stripes when Bill Murray yells: “But we’re American soldiers! We’ve been kicking ass for 200 years! We’re 10 and 1!” We all know what that “1” is—we argue fiercely about who lost Vietnam, but we do at least seem to agree it was a loss. And I’m not so sure we’re unblemished beyond that: Korea and 1812 seem like draws to me. So we’re more like 8-1-2. Or is that now 8-2-2? We will be fighting about this for decades, and if the Vietnam revisionism is any guide, there will be a concerted effort one day to move Iraq into the win column—and to be certain to assign the win to George W. Bush and not Barack Obama.
There are the 32,000 American soldiers who were injured, many quite gravely. The 10,000 or so Iraqi soldiers killed; the 100,000-plus Iraqi civilians killed; the 1.2 million Iraqis displaced; and the 1.6 million who were turned into refugees (all these numbers from this). The price of war, you say, nothing to be done about it. No. Of all the lessons we might carry away from this conflict, let us never forget that this carnage is a direct result of specific decisions and choices made by the Bush administration. Donald Rumsfeld’s conviction that the war could be won quickly with 130,000 soldiers and Paul Bremer’s decision to proceed with de-Baathification stand out here, less well-remembered examples include the State Department’s 17-volume guidebook on what to do after we toppled Saddam that Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, et alia threw in the trash can. Virtually all the human costs, virtually all the little children’s lives lost, came from the Bush people’s arrogance. Not their miscalculations, as is sometimes said. Their arrogance, in not listening to—and indeed in firing (Eric Shinseki)—experts who tried to tell them otherwise.
And then there’s the money: more than $800 billion in direct costs that Bush kept off-budget, contributing significantly to our financial nightmares right now. There’ll be another half-trillion or so, give or take, in the care of the war’s veterans as the years wind on. Also worth noting: we are spending more on reconstruction assistance in Iraq than we did in Germany and Japan combined ($62 billion to $52 billion, in constant dollars).
The final indictment of this war goes back to its beginnings—the way we were so repeatedly and insultingly lied to about its justifications. . . . . all that garbage about WMD and nuclear capabilities were obvious lies. A policy constructed around such dishonesty is corrupt at its very essence, and this war was corrupt from Day 1.
But now that it’s over, we will enter the next phase, when the war will be over how the history books tell the story of Iraq. This will go one of two ways. First, if Iraq stabilizes on its own, we will see some time pass, enough for Americans to forget the things they didn’t like, maybe four or five years. And then sure enough we’ll get a big book from one of the conservative imprints arguing that the war was an unalloyed victory, and specifically building the case that the victory was Bush’s. The unspeakable lies and blunders will be given short shrift;
The second scenario, should Iraq not stabilize, will be even worse. Then, the unanimous verdict will be that it was indeed a loss, and in that case, the important thing will be the pinning of the blame. Given that right-wing Vietnam revisionism got its start in the early 1980s, we can fully expect, in about seven years or so, an array of books and panels and seminars and maybe even films or television shows (hello, Joel Surnow) that will somehow argue that the liberals lost Iraq. All that carping about withdrawal, you see.
Will it work? Vietnam revisionism has not exactly worked overall, but at crucial moments—i.e., the Swiftboating of John Kerry—it has performed adequately enough to muddy the truth. There is no doubt, though, that the fight is coming.
For the good of the country, I sincerely hope that the real truth of this inglorious disaster is never forgotten nor who politically was responsible.
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