The Poet's Eye 
        commentary by Lightning Rod

the Poets' Eye is skeptical
without being cynical, innocent
without being naive and
critical without being
judgmental

 

Not A Pretty Picture
for release on 11-22-04

The recent video of an American soldier killing an unarmed supine Iraqi in a mosque is the visual emblem of what a fine mess we have gotten ourselves into. Despite our vaunted 'victory' in Fallujah, the car bombings and the assaults on police stations and the attacks on American soldiers continue on a daily basis. To think that there will be bona fide elections in Iraq by January is as preposterous as thinking that there could be free and fair elections in Hell or in Vietnam in 1968. Not only have the Iraqis never been to Electoral College, there is a foreign occupying force in their country and a dedicated resistance bent on upsetting US plans to hold elections at the point of a gun.

So, the guy was playing dead. He may have had a hand grenade under his shirt, who knows? The marine had just been wounded in battle the day before, so he capped the guy just to make sure, and for a little payback, perhaps. Things like this happen in wars. It's not like this was the first innocent person killed in this war or in any war. But it was caught on camera and broadcast throughout the Arab world and in America. In some cases a picture can speak more than a thousand words.

Al Jazeera has shown the video of the mosque shooting while declining to broadcast the video of Margaret Hassan being murdered. The same PR firm that is handling Bushco must be advising the insurgents as well. What were they thinking? Did they imagine that murdering a woman who was the Iraqi counterpart to Mother Theresa would win hearts and minds? But ugly things happen in wars.

We can only imagine how many friends the mosque shooting video is making for us in the rest of Iraq and the Arab world. An Iraqi young man would have to be either nuts or desperate to try to enlist in the police or army these days. They are viewed by their countrymen as collaborators. We learned in Vietnam how formidable an insurgent force working with the cooperation of the general civilian population can be. Even when fighting with primitive or improvised weapons, such a home based, native insurgency can be nearly beyond defeat. The French discovered this in both Vietnam and Morocco. The British discovered it in Northern Ireland and America. We discovered it in Vietnam. The Greeks, the British and the Russians all discovered this in Afghanistan and we are starting to get the message there too.

The two flimsy reasons presented by the US for invading Iraq were (1.) To remove the cruel and evil tyrant, Saddam Hussein and (2.) to secure and destroy the Weapons of Mass Destruction that our multi-billion dollar intelligence apparatus told us that Saddam possessed.

Ok, so there were no WMD's. I'm surprised that we didn't plant a nuke under Saddam's bed in the Presidential Palace and claim that there were plans to put it on inner tubes and have twenty jihadist dolphins swim it into New York Harbor. If the CIA had been on the ball, they would have done that.

And we captured Saddam. He was in a scurvy hidey hole, remember? He was helpless and unshaven and armed with the true weapon of mass destruction, a satchel full of hundred dollar bills. We caught him. There were no WMD's. Hey, Bush was right. Mission Accomplished. Now let's go home and let the Iraqi people do what we claim we want them to do, determine their own destiny. They've somehow survived for four thousand years in the Fertile Crescent without our guns stuck up their asses. Why are we still there?

Oh, for a minute I forgot the real purpose of the war in Iraq. It has nothing to do with liberating the Iraqi people and making them free. If that was true, we would come home at this point. It has to do with liberating oil, and making money.

Halliburton and Bechtel and Exxon and British Petroleum care as much about the Middle Eastern natives as the railroads cared about the American Indians when they sponsored the systematic slaughter of the bison. What the corporations want are the resources and the transport routes in the Mid East. The natives are just a minor inconvenience to those ends. I guess that the neocons thought that the indians could be bought off with beads and mirrors. They thought if we put a McDonald's on every corner in Baghdad and held show-biz elections, then we could move on to our next imperial adventure. Sorry guys. It ain't happening.

Our imperial forces are so bogged down and stretched thin in Iraq that we would be hard pressed to attempt an incursion into Iran or North Korea, where WMD's actually do exist or preparations are being made for their manufacture. The only way to provide the necessary manpower for future invasions that are on the neocon Agenda will be to reinstitute the draft. Just watch what that does to the massive 51 to 48 percent 'mandate' that Bushco enjoys. We will likely have our Israeli clients take care of the Iranians but the North Koreans might be a more complicated matter. After all, they already have nukes. To corral them, we need the South Koreans, the Chinese and the Japanese. This is complicated diplomacy. Do you think Condoleezza Rice can handle the job? Not likely.

The Poet's Eye will enjoy observing the Bush II administration as it falls into the same arrogance that has plagued all modern second term presidents. Johnson (Vietnam.) Nixon (Watergate.) Reagan (Iran Contra.) Clinton (Lewinsky.) George Bush thinks he has a 'mandate' to be a crusader for evangelical democracy. In that he is an idealistic fool. But the people behind him who set policy and profit by the results are much smarter and less idealistic. They won't hesitate to shoot an unarmed man playing dead.

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