To most Americans it is obvious by now that the political and strategic results of the Iraq war are a major disaster that will hurt our country's interest for a long time to come not to mention the cost in American and Iraqi lives. The path to follow seems to elude everyone, and the people who came up with the idea in the first place are absolutely clueless. Just today Iraq was declared the second most "failed state" courtesy of the Bush administration. The next quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on King Leopold of Belgium applies as if it was written yesterday:
"It is upon the King, always the King, that the guilt must lie," he writes. "He planned it, knowing the results which must follow. They did follow. He was well informed of it. Again and again, and yet again, his attention was drawn to it. A word from him would have altered the system. The word was never said. There is no possible subterfuge by which the moral guilt can be deflected from the head of the state...
So the question for everyone that cares remains: what the hell do we do now? Granted, most Americans that have no relation to the military or have no political or historical interest are so far removed from what is happening that they simply don't care.That is one of the luxuries of living in affluent America, far away, isolated America.
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Thanks for the photo of the most powerful man in the world executing effective foreign policy for his Saudi masters, I mean colleagues! What do we do now? Jan 2009 is a long way off. On the city and state level their are politicians with a will foreffective domestic energy and economics, the recognition of global warming. Do you think the next presidential election is a solution? Maybe we could build a biodome over Texas. Put Bush and his pals in. No door handle on the inside...
What should we do now? Perhaps we should start by resisting the temptation to let this colossal blunder in Iraq go down as the singular work of one arrogant fratboy. While I agree that our CIC bears ultimate responsibility for the Iraq disaster, let's not forget who the real "deciders" of our misguided domestic/foreign policy were/are. Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and the rest of the rather arrogant chickenhawk signatories to the "Project for a New American Century" had designs on Iraq cooking for a long time. And now they and the rest of the neocons are more than willing to to throw Mr. 29% under the bus(figuratively speaking of course) to save the future for more neocon schemes.
So we start by recognizing that we have a systemic problem that will bring a steady diet of the same decline we've experienced since the Gipper (if we don't put a stop to it)- endless war, increasing centralization of money/power, and a deteriorating middle class.
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