Lofty rhetoric has
earned tough look
"Patriotism and its malignant cousin, nationalism, have piled the corpses millions high over the last several hundred years. We spend and waste more on military spending than all the other countries in the world combined," said Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, during a recent speech at the annual Human Rights Festival here in Athens. As Memorial Day observances take place around America, and as war rages on in the desert disaster that is Iraq, it is time for this nation's citizens and taxpayers to take stock of the toll wars have taken on the lives and treasure of all Americans.
As President Bush screws on a somber face and lays flowers at the tombs of America's war dead, Americans must question and protest his war of choice in Iraq that already has killed or maimed thousands of Iraqi civilians and U.S. military men and women. Right now America's invasion of Iraq is costing taxpayers more than $6,000 per second, and the monetary toll of Bush's ill-conceived Iraq incursion could well mount into astronomical figures of more than a trillion dollars before it is over.
Economist Robert Higgs said, "When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie." The Bush/Cheney White House has indeed lied, misled and exaggerated this once-great nation into a war in Iraq that cynically uses the tragedy of 9/11 to fuel the Bush regime's dreams of oil and empire. Most of the airplane hijackers who perpetrated the terror attacks of nearly six years ago were from Saudi Arabia. None of them were from Iraq, yet Bush used the 9/11 carnage to justify war with Iraq while walking hand in hand and cheek to sheik with his oil-rich pals from the repressive Saudi royal family. While Bush makes high-sounding platitudes about bringing democracy to Iraq, he says nothing about the lack of democracy in Saudi Arabia and in many of the other despotic regimes that this country has long supported around the world.
Here at home, support for the Bush/Cheney administration is dwindling, and deservedly so. Calls for the impeachment of both the president and the vice president are getting louder and louder across the land, but most congressional Democrats continue to show profiles in poltroonery as they take the issue of impeachment "off the table," in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's phrase. Still, opposition to the current White House crew is growing, and diehard support for the president and his henchmen has dropped to about the 30 percent level. One has to snicker at smirking, swaggering Bush Leaguers who now are a pitiful political minority.
As Bush and company mouth their Memorial Day mantra about freedom Monday, let us hope their lofty rhetoric will be questioned by more and more Americans. The Iraq war has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with Bush's ego and stubbornness. With Bush's war, freedom is a loser and the only winner is what Army General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex."
In his book "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace," literary lion Gore Vidal documents scores of American-instigated wars, military incursions and "brushfire wars" since World War II. The old writer and World War II veteran contends that not since this nation battled the Axis powers of the 1940s has America really fought a war for freedom.
While Bush speaks of freedom on Memorial Day, his policies lead to less freedom at home and abroad. While Bush blathers his empty slogans of pride and patriotism, all Americans should consider the wise words of author and anti-war activist Mark Twain: "Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."
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