George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley said it best yesterday on Keith Olbermann regarding the British Public Inquiry into the Iraq War that recently saw former Prime Minister Tony Blair extensively questioned:
“The British have this quaint notion, don’t they, that their leaders should have to explain decisions that cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Could you imagine George Bush being questioned for 5 or 6 hours. The fact that we can’t imagine that really says that there is something wrong with our political system. Ultimately, American citizens are likely to learn more from our British cousins than they are from our Congress or our leaders about a war that has cost us dearly.”
I get it. Most of us want to move on from this embarrassing chapter in American history. This is particularly true for those of us who spent time in Iraq, saw the devastation first hand, the lives lost and shattered, the mismanagement and chaos. We want to forget that our leaders fixed the intelligence around a relentless objective of regime change in Iraq at all costs. We want to forget that they spent no time planning for the aftermath and how to put back together the nation they had taken apart. It’s nice to forget and move on. Far easier than justice and accountability.
The problem is we are not just dealing with the past. The long war against extremism is still raging and the fall out from our past actions still accumulates. The world is watching, particularly the Muslim world. We like to quip in lofty speeches and capital gang round tables that the terrorists are fascist demagogues that don’t believe in anything. That it is our universal values, our history of laws, our respect for the rights of man that separate us from our adversaries. But words can’t compete with deeds. The emerging civil societies of the Middle East are smart enough to pinpoint the gaping deficit between what we say and what we do. And the way the American political system has systematically swept all accountability for the Iraq war under the carpet only reinforces the prevailing narrative in the region.
And the narrative- distorted and selective, but nonetheless, effective, particularly with the populist masses- goes something like this: these guys talk a lot about freedom and liberty and human rights, but their track record is really abysmal. In ’48 the Israelis went in and de-populated 500 Palestinian villages and no one did anything about it. Now Gaza is an open-air concentration camp and the Americans still give $2 billion a year unconditionally to Israel. Do they really want peace? If so, why are they selling arms to one side at the same time? In ’53 the Americans removed a democratically elected government in Iran and installed a repressive dictator. Do they really want to promote democracy and freedom? If so, why are they supporting tyrants- from Egypt to Jordan to Saudi Arabia- at the same time?
Taken within this historical context, the Iraq war and its justification ring particularly hollow among the Muslim masses who lend sympathy and resources to our extremist adversaries. They are more likely to believe the counter-argument: that this is a Western campaign- ideological or resource driven, it does not matter- against the Muslim world. No wonder Al Qaeda recruiting continues to be a growth industry. No amount of soothing words or reasoned rhetoric can calm an Iraqi widow who has just lost a husband or an Iraqi father who has just lost a son. Unfortunately, emotion trumps all, particularly in the tribal, traditional cultures prevalent in the region.
We often lecture our friends in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine etc. about the endless cycles of destructiveness that can result from traditions of revenge and retribution. Ironically, this is exactly the lens that much of the Muslim world viewed our actions following the 9/11 attacks. They saw a super power lashing out blindly against arbitrary foes (such as a secular Ba’ath regime in Iraq that was a natural bulwark against both Islamic fundamentalism and the mullahs of Iran) instead of patiently bringing those responsible to justice. They saw Americans thirsting for blood. Now, it’s obvious to the world that our political system- the self-proclaimed envy of the world- has no will or capacity to hold accountable those responsible for whipping up these passions and letting them loose. That’s sad.
This is not about a war begun seven years ago that needs to be forgotten. It’s about the steady and ongoing deterioration of the American image and capacity to lead and inspire.
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