4,000, and Counting

George W. Bush sounded as dim-witted as ever when he said, upon hearing of the 4,000th American killed in Iraq, that our dead had laid a “foundation for peace.”

Remind me -- was there War in Iraq prior to the American invasion?

Was there chaos, violence, car-bombings, suicide bombings, sectarian death squads, ethnic cleansing, and a mass internal exodus?

Prior to the U.S. Invasion and Occupation, did the electric grid work, did clean water flow through the pipes, did raw sewage get treated and could Iraqis move about the country in relative freedom and safety?

The people who brought us the Invasion and Occupation told us – told the entire world – that the armed action would be brief, relatively bloodless, and monetarily cheap; they told us that everyday Iraqis would rise up and establish a glorious Democracy in the Middle East; they told us that the Americans would be welcomed as deliriously as the French welcomed Americans in Paris in 1944.

Intelligent people the world over knew that invading Iraq for its purported role in the 9/11 terror attacks was an insane foray into a vipers nest; intelligent people knew that there was no logical nexus between 9/11 and Iraq; and those same intelligent people were quite certain that no Weapons of Mass Destruction would turn up in Iraq. When Bush changed the rationale from rooting out WMD to “liberating” the long-suffering Iraqi people, intelligent people knew the President was full of shit.

If the sole point of the Iraq Invasion and Occupation was freeing people living under tyranny, when is the U.S. going to invade Cuba, North Korea, Pakistan or one of several suffering African nations? Aren’t the people in those places worthy of a gift of freedom from the U.S.?

No matter how we mourn 4,000 American dead – and all of us should examine our complicity in this mess, though none more than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and a number of lesser arrogant assholes -- ordinary, innocent Iraqis have suffered many times more. Every Iraqi killed or injured is like the proverbial pebble in a pond, emanating outwards, touching dozens of lives – mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends.

The failed Occupation of Iraq may have vanished from American TV screens, but the consequence of our stupidity, hubris, and foolishness goes on, and on. We may bestow medals on the survivors of this grim exercise in imperial overreach, call them heroes, name streets and federal buildings in their honor, but none of that hoopla will erase the fact that this Invasion and Occupation was based on lies and propaganda and had nothing to do with keeping the U.S. secure.