The American Nation That Cried Wolf

I wrote about an anti-war blog entry a couple of days ago, and am about to write about a couple of anti-war novels within the next day or two – always assuming that I complete them on time, of course.

Not sure why the topic has come up, although I will say this – much about the drumbeat of war has bothered me. We seem to be heading quickly towards situations where war is considered a viable option by many. Now, maybe it's Iran instead of Iraq . Perhaps Syria . Always, it seems that we are inching closer to war.

Here is the thing about that, though. While I do not know that a nuclear Iran is necessarily a good thing – and I am inclined to think it would more likely than not be a bad thing – what seems infinitely worse to me is seeing another war break out over such a "crisis" in that region of the world, yet again.

I remember being strongly opposed to the war in Iraq , and being taken as either weak, or as an idiot, by some vocal supporters of war at the time. There was one guy that I would have particularly animated exchanges with, and I remember him telling me that Saddam Hussein had a massive arsenal of weapons, and that "you don't build an arsenal like that unless you intend to use it." I responded by reminding him that the United States had a much larger arsenal, and the same logic applied, that they were just itching to use these costly, but oh-so-cool weapons.

I felt at the time, and still feel, that the reasons for that war were fabricated, and on so many levels. It seemed ridiculous that people were comparing Saddam to Hitler or Stalin, and that he posed an "immediate threat to world peace". That he had a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD's), and that he had a forty-five minute response time if he wanted to launch a missile attack. In other words, if you believed these reports, his Iraq was virtually a rival superpower, as opposed to a relatively small and recently defeated nation, and that Saddam had been clinging to power with increased desperation after the defeat in the first Gulf War. Rumsfeld kept claiming that those weapons were real, and that the threat Saddam's Iraq posed was imminent, yet he claimed, rather paradoxically, that a war against the huge threat to world peace would last six days or six weeks, but not six months.

We all know what happened next, right? The United States fought the war, and Americans kept hearing that the nation had achieved the glory that victory had brought. The tiny nation was overwhelmed, and Saddam's regime indeed fell, and quickly. Statues were toppled, and the images seemed reminiscent of the end of the Cold War, when  Stalin statues were torn down.

Yes, if you believed what many of the major news channels were claiming, we had just scored a major victory against a tyrannical power that had posed a longstanding threat to world peace, instead of having intervened in the affairs of a sovereign nation, and largely justified it by exaggerating claims of Saddam's power and abilities, and putting up a smokescreen, rather willy-nilly, in order to try and disguise the obvious: that this was a war of aggression by the United States that was being waged by an oil rich administration against an oil rich nation.

Before long, it was revealed, of course, that there had been no legitimacy to the claims of WMD's, and that Saddam could not put up a fraction of the resistance that the fear mongers had proclaimed he could and would, with inevitable missile strikes targeting American troops having been, evidently, entirely exaggerated.

No, we saw none of that. But what we did see, of course, were no bid contracts to corporate allies of the Bush Administration, most famously Halliburton. We also saw the administration proclaim victory quickly, and then saw that the war was obviously much more complicated than they had originally predicted that it would be, and would last far longer, too. The war intensified after Bush had infamously gone on that aircraft carrier and given a speech proclaiming a cessation of hostilities in Iraq, with a huge banner in the background proclaiming:

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

That banner might not have been entirely off, either. Indeed, the Bush Administration had achieved it's goal of an illegitimate war against the wishes of the world, and with no proof of any of the reports and claims that alleged suspicion of Saddam's weapons program and supposedly massive arsenal.

Of course, it came at a price, and a higher one than most Americans probably realize even still. First off, the image of the United States took a major, major hit around the world. I remember a poll that shocked Americans, revealing that far more Canadians viewed the United States as a bigger threat to world peace than Iraq. Many were opposed to the war around the world, and some governments fell, while others remained in place, based on their opposition, or lack thereof, to the American effort to promote the cause of war with the so-called "Coalition of the Willing".

Also, by falsifying and greatly exaggerating claims in their desire for war, the Bush Administration, and Americans overall, essentially seriously hurt their own credibility. So much so, in fact, that many people – including many Americans themselves – are highly skeptical about reports of the supposed nuclear abilities of Iran. Having now seen two wars that were supposed to have been won quickly instead drag on and on, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars, not to mention thousands of American soldier's lives and countless lives on the other side, military and civilian, as well as seeing their reputation take a huge hit, Americans seem now far more reluctant than ever before in my lifetime to engage in armed conflict with anyone. Considering the enormity of the experience in Vietnam, that is saying something. But that also shows the price of being the international equivalent of the "Boy Who Cried Wolf". When you make such a point of initiating a war of aggression to pursue a narrow and self-serving agenda, blindly following an administration that was bad news to begin with, then that is a price that you have to be willing to pay.

Perhaps Iran is indeed close to having obtained nuclear armaments. Perhaps it is as much of a threat as some claim that it is. Perhaps Syria is such a threat, and maybe there are some relatively justifiable reasons to advocate some kind of military intervention there. I, for one, am not convinced of all that, but surely there are some who would make such claims. The thing is, war brings out the worst in people, and is almost like a permission slip for all sorts of abuses. It has been said that the first victim of war is truth. In very recent times in the United States, nobody has proven that better than the Bush Administration and the propaganda machine that helped to make their dreams of war a reality.

"The first casualty of war is truth." Senator Hiram Johnson