Obama, the Democrats, and Militarism

A few days ago the President addressed the nation, declaring the end of combat operations in Iraq.

He promised to pull the last troops out of the country by July of 2011.  That's good.  The editor of a progressive magazine, however, in a piece published in the Sunday Oregonian, asserted that that agreement, to have the last U.S. combat troops leave by July 2011, was made possible some time before Obama came into office, and the key player was Iran, a country the Democrats seem to threaten to invade every so often.

I hope we do get the last combat troops out of Iraq by the deadline President Bush arranged.  We might not; President Bush, let us recall, announced himself the end of combat operations in Iraq quite a long time ago, in May of 2003.

Let me observe that Presidents Bush and Obama have more in common with respect to the war in Iraq than simply having announced the end of combat operations, seven years apart.

That first announcement by Bush was characterized by an overwhelming degree of militarism.  The President appeared in military uniform, on an aircraft carrier, to make a major announcement to the nation.  This was in great contrast to a previous Republican President, Dwight David Eisenhower, a five-star general, who never appeared in military uniform to make a political speech.  That a President whose highest rank had been as pilot in the air force of the Texas state militia appeared in military uniform speaks volumes about the much greater acceptance of militarist attitudes that we tolerate today.

What about Obama's announcement?

"This milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans," said President Obama last Tuesday, "that the future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment."

A horrific war crime, the massacre of over a hundred fifty thousand innocent people, men women and children, should serve as a reminder that the future is ours to shape.  No one has called us on our war crime, no one has exploded a bomb in our cities, gassed our people, or poisoned our fields.  Therefore the future is ours to shape.  We can move forward with confidence and commitment, confidence and commitment that the American Empire, established by means of force and violence, enforced with senseless brutality and slaughter, is still in being.

Following that counter-factual assertion, that the future, subsequent to an aggressive war waged for no purpose, is still secure, the President allowed some concessions of imperfection into his speech.  Thousands of American have been killed; tens of thousands have been wounded; no mention entered the speech of over a hundred thousand dead Iraqis.

"Yet there has been one constant amid these shifting tides," the President said. "At every turn, America's men and women in uniform have served with courage and resolve."

With complete control of the air, with overwhelming artillery, tank, and satellite support, our army beat their army.  The armed forces of the United States then proceeded to torture, brutalize, murder, and humiliate the occupied nation of Iraq, the very invasion of which was and remains a war crime, punishable by international tribunal which this country has refused to join; but the President considers these willing accomplices to an historic rape of a country innocent of the trumped-up charges offered against it in the United Nations, these unquestioning servants of imperial overreach, admirable.

"As commander-in-chief, I am incredibly proud of their service."  And a paragraph or so of praise later, "Because of our troops and civilians -- and because of the resilience of the Iraqi people -- Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny."

Talk about empty rhetoric!  If we had killed more than the hundred-odd thousand, let us say six hundred thousand, and displaced even more than the million or so, the remaining poor blighters would still have the "opportunity to embrace a new destiny."   If we had killed all but one hundred Iraqis, and genocidally obliterated the entire country, the few remaining alive would have, as a result, the "opportunity to embrace a new destiny."  But, please note, the active agents in this completely meaningless phrase are our troops and civilians.  The leading edge of the American Imperial Enterprise.

As a side note: Al-Qaeda, as is well-known, was opposed, rather successfully within Iraq, by the pre-war Iraqi leadership.  The head of the U.S. anti-terrorist intelligence unit in the Bush White House said to Congress that invading Iraq because of al-Qaeda's attack on September 11th was equivalent to invading Baja California as a result of Pearl Harbor. People in Iraq joined al-Qaeda almost exclusively out of opposition to U.S. war crimes.  How ironic the claim in the mouth of the President, that "Iraqi forces have taken the fight to al Qaeda, removing much of its leadership in Iraqi-led operations."  They wouldn't have had to remove anyone if the United States hadn't invaded!

But the most striking evidence of the dominance of an attitude that can only be termed triumphant militarism came at the point where the President moved from discussing foreign war to discussing domestic domestic affairs.  It's worth quoting in full.

Ending this war is not only in Iraq's interest; it's in our own.  The United States has paid a huge price to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people.  We have sent our young men and women to make enormous sacrifices in Iraq and spent vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home.

It is not, mind you, in our interests to stop killing men, women, and children who are completely innocent of any connection to the gang of criminals who brought down the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon.  Some of our soldiers, about one for every one hundred they have killed, have been killed in the course of this war crime.  And it cost a lot of money.

We've persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people, a belief that, out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization.  Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibilities.  Now it's time to turn the page.

We have blasted and blown up and shot at people for seven years.  The Shiites and Sunni both have slackened the pace of shooting back at us, the former because Iran has said to, the latter because we're bribing their leaders.  This reduction in the rate of loss of American troops is defined as "hav[ing] met our responsibilities."

As we do, I'm mindful that the Iraq war has been a contentious issue at home.  Here, too, it's time to turn the page.

The responsibility of the United States not to invade a country innocent of threatening this country has vanished.  "It's time to turn the page," since the U.S. combat operations have ceased (about which claim, the Associated Press disagrees).  That frame of reference is what I mean when I say we are in the grip, in the United States, of triumphant militarism.  

"MIlitarism," wrote Alfred Vagts in 1938, has connoted "a domination of the military over the civilian, and undue preponderance of military demands, and emphasis on military considerations, spirits, ideals, and scales of value, in the life of states."

It was wrong to have invaded Iraq.  To learn from that error involves holding the Republican President responsible for his crime against humanity.  And the Democratic President who claims that "we have met our responsibilities" because so few Americans per week are dying is himself an example of the problem.  Adherence to civilized norms of behavior, to international law, to common sense treatment of foreign nations -- all that is swept aside, for military considerations.  Through all of this, our brave fighting men and women have performed the tasks they have been asked to perform -- that's what makes America great, not law, not justice, not freedom of association or of speech.

I cannot change all this alone.  But if you vote for me, I'll be at least aware of what the problem is, unlike the Republican and Democratic parties.