Hard Stuff: War

Of course, BP is indispensible because they have not just any old government contracts, but big, fat defense contracts. Without them, we might not be able to conduct the war. Wars, rather. Most unfortunate.

It’s a tough issue now, of course. But Mrs. Drinkwalter could have told them there were probably no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The U.S. and other western powers had been selling arms to Saddam for years, and were in a position to know pretty much what he did or didn’t have.

Mrs. Drinkwalter could also have explained the folly of going to war in response to the terrible events of 9-11. The things that happened that day, however tragic and horrifying, did not constitute an act of war. They were crimes. The way to fight crime is with police work. Careful, well-organized police work that uses under-cover investigation, builds community support, waits, watches and connects dots, and moves in to make arrests as soon as there is enough evidence to stand up in court and hopefully before the suspects realize they are in trouble. Simply put, the kind of police work that might have stopped 9-11 before it happened.

Just after 9-11, the U.S. had an unprecedented opportunity to lead the world community in an international police effort to combat crimes of terror. But what did they do? (Note: it is customary to use the pronoun “we,” not “they,” to refer to the actions of one’s government, as indeed I did through the Vietnam war and various other misadventures, but under the Bush administration I made a decision to opt out of this rhetorical “we.”)

They gave everybody to understand that somehow we had been invaded by Iraq, easily done because of the weak grasp of world history and geography produced in America’s public schools, and sent in ground troops. Apparently with fantasies of being welcomed as liberators like GI’s marching through the streets of Naples at the end of the Second World War.

Obama has taken the position that the U.S. needs to be in Afghanistan, but not in Iraq. This is perhaps an expression of his centrist philosophy, a stupid, pointless war being the obvious middle point between two stupid, pointless wars and none. But stupid and pointless it is, nonetheless. For awhile, it looked as though Afghanistan was Russian for Vietnam. Unfortunately it also appears to be Vietnam for the U.S. all over again, as well.

And, of course, quite aside from questions of effective crime-control strategy and international law, the really dumb part of these wars is that they cost a whole lot of money that we never had, with obvious impact on the economy.

The problem for the Cocktail Party platform is constructing any kind of policy proposal out of "I could have told you that all along. What the **** are you going to do now?"