Opinion Editorials, March 2008
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Iraq: America's moral and financial meltdowns By Ben Tanosborn |
ccun.org, March 23, 2008
Iraq: Five Shameful Years
without Shame
My contributory remembrance to this fifth anniversary of Bush’s infamous
invasion of Iraq is neither a journalistic peace memorial to that
holocaustic, still ongoing conflict; nor is it a disguised book review
of Bilmes’ and Stiglitz’ “The Three Trillion Dollar War.” It has little
to do with the infamy of a man presiding over the annihilative power of
the United States, and his incompetent, amoral administration; or for
that matter, with the cold economic tabulation of war costs made in
unsustainable, borrowed greenbacks.
Instead, it has to do with a cost that Americans – an overwhelming
majority of the adult population of this nation – are unwilling to
acknowledge, much less face: that the Iraq adventurous fiasco may have
started as a criminal act of a few, but it’s continuing as a criminal
replication of the many… ultimately resulting in total hardening of the
nation’s compassionate arteries, and a complete loss of conscience and
national shame.
Why, why have Americans hardened their hearts,
encrusted and cauterized them with an impenetrable wall to feelings,
emotions and morality? Have Americans in their self-indulgence for
material things become so callous to the needs of others? Or even
to the pain and suffering of their fellow men, particularly those beyond
America’s borders? Have our people reached the culmination of
insensitivity by permitting death when life is always an option at hand?
Sixty-two years ago, with Adolph Hitler dead, the Allies tried to find
justice in Nuremberg by putting on trial 24 key individuals from the
Third Reich. These “dirty two-dozen” were indicted for crimes of
conspiracy against peace; and/or, planning, initiating and waging wars
of aggression; and/or war crimes; and/or crimes against humanity.
And at the end of the trial, half of them were condemned to hang.
Now, with belligerence in full regalia – not just in Iraq but
Afghanistan, Palestine and Pakistan as well – and George W. Bush still
alive, continuing to inspire fear around the globe with his finger on
the nuclear button… why is it that neither US courts nor any
international tribunal will dare take on this renegade and bring him,
together with his administration’s own “dirty two-dozen,” to some type
of criminal trial?
Are we saying that Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Walter Funk, Ernest
Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, plus a dozen and
a half others, were more criminally-prone, perhaps because of an ugly
Teutonic gene, than today’s counterparts in America’s Reich? You
know: Dick Cheney, Paul Bremer, Alan Greenspan, George Tenet, Donald
Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Alberto Gonzales and other
villains from the Pentagon-Neocon brotherhood who many will attest are
capable of holding their own if matched against the detested leadership
of the Schutzstaffel (SS).
Of course, Germans will tell you, and one would be hard-pressed to
disagree with their logic citing the application of different rules,
that it’s just a matter of Siegerjustiz (“victor’s justice”). And
in this particular case, since the empire has not lost the war, nor is
in any danger of so doing, that there is hardly any relevance to even
contemplate the prospect of indictments by an international court.
At least for now, only Americans have the ethical and juridical duty to
take care of its own monster, a monster of their own creation… something
which they appear unwilling to do.
Just as survivors of the four-decade old My Lai massacre were evoking
three days ago that horrendous war crime in which 504 villagers
(children, women and elderly) were assassinated by an American army
platoon – a war crime incident for which justice was never rendered –
there will be others evocations reminding us of Iraq’s “mylais”.
From Basra to Mosul, there are cities and villages in this cradle of
civilization that saw, and are seeing, war crimes perpetrated for which
there won’t be justice done, and only token punishment given; such as
those committed in Fallujah, Haditha and the very personal geography of
those fallen victim to the evitable, yet shown as inevitable, collateral
damage, as if discarded Siamese twins surgically removed by the
invader’s weapons.
Five years… five years past both whim and planning of a barbaric man of
war who claims to talk to God. But let’s ask ourselves… could such
god see fit to bless a country where heart and conscience have so
hardened? Could that god bless and protect a nation lacking in
shame and repentance? The same god that Bush claims he talks to?
Has Iraq turned out to be the overheating factor causing America’s moral
and financial meltdowns? It’s looking more and more that way.
Ben Tanosborn
ben@tanosborn.com
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