Beinhart's Body Politic

To Die for a Mistake

by Larry Beinhart and photographs by Dion Ogust, December 27, 2006

Happy New Year. It feels like a year of change and hope. Then I realize, with a sense of real astonishment, that George Bush is still president of the United States. Dick Cheney is still vice president. They have not changed. There will not be a kinder, gentler Dick Cheney. He will remain as ruthless and rapacious as an oil company and he will still smirk from the depths of his soul. George Bush has not heard the alarm clock go off. He has not awakened, as from a dream, newly realistic, humble, and conciliatory. He still tells himself he’s been chosen by God and that we mere mortals won’t get his legacy right until long after he’s dead. Their people still run the executive branch. They will continue to do their best to maintain maximum secrecy, wage a bogus “war on terror,” remove civil rights and constitutional protections, funnel money to the religious right under the guise of faith-based initiatives, subvert environmental regulations, and open federal lands to oil drilling, logging, and mining. They will continue to stack the federal courts with neo-con extremists. They will fight for unlimited presidential power. They will fight to have classes of people who have no rights—not even the rights of criminals or prisoners of war. They will fight against the Geneva Convention. They will fight to be able to torture people and for Americans to have immunity from being charged with war crimes. They will continue to pursue unsound economic policies, favor the ultrarich over even the moderately rich, let alone the middle and working classes. I don’t mean to rain on your New Year’s parade, but the rain seems to be a result of global warming and this administration will continue to fight tooth and nail against anything that will slow it down. Which brings us to the war in Iraq. Iraq is chaos. Murder, rape, kidnapping, extortion, theft, bombings, shootings, and looting are all common, daily occurrences. The government doesn’t function. It can’t deliver basic services like water, sewers, garbage removal, schools, medical care, electricity, telephones, mail, banking. The police and the army don’t function—at least not in their official capacity. Their members, however, make up militias and death squads. The goal of the Bush administration has always been “victory.” The strategy has been “We’ll stand down when the Iraqis stand up!” Clearly, at this point, they’re not standing up. There has been a lot of talk recently about putting pressure on Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, to do more standing up and cracking down. It would seem, on the face of it, that, if he could, he certainly would have already. Strange as it may seem to Americans, the head of Iraq’s government has more to lose from the collapse of Iraq than we do. I have heard TV pundits say that he’s failing to act because the Americans are doing too much for him. Cut that kid’s allowance, make him go out and get a job and he’ll learn the value of running a country right! They would, if they could, but they can’t. At this point, “We’ll stand up when they stand down” is a formula for perpetual chaos. The Iraq Study Group has released its report. It’s intelligent, thorough, and realistic. If there is a solution to the Iraq problem, the ISG report may well be it. But it’s moot. It requires the United States Government to be honest and realistic. To be patient and flexible. To have respect for other countries and for the United Nations.