War in the Morning

I got up rather late this morning as I stayed up late last night. I made some coffee and turned on the television. I found that Errol Morris' The Fog of War had just started on HBO or one of the movie channels. It is one of my favorite documentaries by one of my favorite directors. I remember going to see it with Pete and Stevie when it was in theaters. Pete and I walked out in awe while Stevie, I think, was just confused. His confusion stemmed, from what I recall, from a basic ignorance of history. He didn't know who Robert McNamara was or much about the main players who were featured in the film. Additionally, I don't think he cared for the style of the film. It isn't your typical documentary with an omniscient narrator voicing over footage that illustrates his words. There's a lot of questions, a lot done to throw McNamara's narrative into question. It's sad because I think that The Fog of War brings up so many important ideas - some crucial to our country here in the immediate post-9/11 period. While watching the movie, I was also checking out some history websites and came across an article entitled, "Immoral Relativism" about the hypocrisy of the Bush administration's blasting of the Left's "moral relativism" while it embraces its own. After the parts of film discussing our fire-bombing of Japan and Vietnam, McNamara asks, "How much evil must we do in order to do good?"

It's certainly not a question that is limited to Sherman's march on the South or Curtis LeMay's bombing of Japan. How many countries must the U.S. invade to do good? But it's also not a question limited to us. How many civilians must die before the jihadists achieve their notion of the good? But we Americans have no control over the morals of jihadists, of radical Muslims who may want to restore the Ottoman Empire or a caliph to rule over a world essentially Muslim in character. We can only determine our own morals and decide which, if any, countries to invade, whom to torture when & where, and, in general, if we're going to put our young men & women in harm's way.

I'm also thinking about a recent Frontline episode about the use of private contractors in Iraq. Aside from the most obvious - the death and destruction - two things struck me. First was the reporting of resentment growing amongst our soldiers that contractors are getting paid large amounts of money to do jobs for which our soldiers do at a much lower rate of pay. Second was the "luxury" of that base outside Baghdad(?) that is to become a permanent military base. Multiple flavors of ice cream, satellite television everywhere, et al. While it's certainly not the case that I don't want our soldiers treated well as they prosecute a war, I wondered if it was really wise to create such an environment. Could the money be spent better elsewhere? Would the accommodations inspire resentment amongst the Iraqi people? I mean, imagine your country being invaded and you see how the invaders live a life of comparable luxury. Wouldn't you feel resentment if they had electricity and clean water all the time and you didn't? I can imagine that such scenes would give the impression of us being occupiers instead of liberators. I was also amazed at the employment statistics of KBR, a Haliburton subsidiary operating in Iraq. If memory serves, it employs some 51,000 people there, of which, 13,000 or so were Americans. Of the remaining 38,000, none were Iraqis.

This whole war is just a cluster fuck. I mean, we've completely forgotten about our men and women in uniform in Afghanistan, a conflict that really had bearing on the "war on terror", aside from any discussion on declaring war upon an idea. Why Iraq? If there were no WMDs and tenuous links to terrorism, at best, and no links to 9/11, why did we invade? Hussein was surely no friend of democracy and a deplorable ruler but he was our "ally" previously. He was no Islamic fundamentalist. Why didn't we invade Iran? Surely it had closer ties to terrorists. And it's a theocracy whose government harbors anti-American sentiments. To top it all off, it also harbors nuclear ambitions. Well, it sure seems that way. Maybe they do only seek nuclear technology for power production. Now that we know there were no WMDs, no terrorist links, and we have laid plans for a permanent military presence in Iraq, I am beginning to think that Bush's/Cheney's/Wolfowitz's motivation for the invasion was simply that it would be easiest. They knew it would be a cakewalk to take the country but I don't believe that they ever wanted to go in and get out ASAP. Cheney wasn't wrong on how long it would take before our troops could leave – I think he just lied. Iraq is a first step for us. The first step towards having a foothold in the Middle East. Is the end oil? Democratizing the Middle East or, at least, installing regimes friendly to us? Both? What is the Bush administration doing to get our "friends" in Saudi Arabia to stop funding terrorism?

How are we to know we we've won this war of George's on terrorism? How much torture will it take? How many sovereign governments do we have to topple? How many more civilians and US soldiers will have to lose their lives? How much more evil do we need to do?