TWO DAYS AGO WAS THE FIFTH anniversary of the Iraq war. That’s a year and a half longer than WWII, but today the news is business as usual i.e. Heather Mills’ divorce from Paul McCartney and Ashley Dupre (Eliot Spitzer’s call girl) being offered a million dollars to pose nude in “Hustler Magazine.” What a country.
Years ago, when the networks decided that the news divisions had to show a profit, reporting began focusing on stories as much for ratings as news. After five years of Iraq people don’t want to hear about it anymore. That leaves neo-con cheerleaders like Dick Cheney to claim the war is a success! Cheney also said we would be “greeted as liberators” and the insurgency was in its “last throes.”
Today, when told by a reporter that 2/3 of the country is against the war, Cheney said rather contemptuously, “So?”
When Bush brags about the “success of the surge”it only confirms the total failure of the previous four years. Gen. Eric Shinseki warned congress that we’d need 200,000 troops to secure the borders. Don Rumsfeld dismissed it as “absurd” and essentially Shinseki was forced to retire.
Last year John McCain declared a bustling Baghdad marketplace was evidence that Iraqis could “shop freely.” McCain was wearing a bulletproof vest, surrounded by soldiers and Blackhawk helicopters. This year the military informed him that he couldn’t visit the marketplace as it was more dangerous than last year! Some surge.
Some refer to McCain as “McBush,” especially after a recent press conference. Defiantly, McCain charged the Iranians with training Al Qaeda. The two have only been enemies for 1,400 years. Panicked, Sen. Liberman covertly whispered into McCain’s ear and I don’t think it was sweet nothings. McCain, whose expertise is supposedly foreign affairs, sheepishly corrected himself.
The wheels are coming off the straight talk express. Recently McCain said, “If there were no casualties, Americans would support the war.” No casualties? Hello? We’re at 3,992 (3,853 since “Mission Accomplished”) with 30,000 wounded, record suicides and PTSD cases possibly in the hundreds of thousands when this occupation is all said and done. If it’s ever all said and done.
One of the many rationales for invading was to bring democracy to Iraq. Five years later, we can’t even bring electricity. It seems like only yesterday Paul Wolfowitz said Iraq had “no ethnic strife and had vast oil revenues to pay for the reconstruction.” What happened to those oil revenues? One-third are siphoned off through corruption and actually fuels the insurgency.
To mark the ominous five-year anniversary, I walked to the Arlington West Memorial north of the pier, a project of Veterans for Peace. Every Sunday volunteers erect a memorial on the beach. Along with bulletin boards featuring photos of some of the wounded and biographies of the fallen, the beach is covered with white crosses, each representing a soldier’s death. In the center is a row of flag-draped coffins which indicate how many GIs have died since the past Sunday.
Every time I return to Arlington West, I’m taken aback by the additional crosses which now almost extend to the water. If they included the innocent Iraqi deaths (600,000) they’d be nearing Zuma.
When I gaze at the endless rows of crosses, or read about the fallen soldiers, young men and women whose lives had barely started, it breaks my heart. It’s madness with no end in sight. I don’t know how the volunteers find the strength to come back each week, but they do.
They start at 4 A.M. grooming the beach and setting up the crosses. During a typical day thousands will view the memorial. Then, before sunset, the volunteers take everything down, only to repeat the process the next Sunday (To see the Web site go to: Arlingtonwestsantamonica.org and be sure to click on “Winter’s Soldiers”, the GI’s actual accounts of the occupation).
At the beginning of this month, and after examining 600,000 documents, the Pentagon concluded there was no operational link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Now they tell us. Even more disturbing was the last Gridiron Club Dinner in D.C. where Bush had the poor taste to joke about missing WMDs. Given the loss of life and destruction, I don’t see the humor. Impeaching Bush on the other hand could be good for a few laughs.
The fifth anniversary of the war has come and gone. I wonder if most Americans even care? I worry that for many a bigger question is will Ashley Dupre pose for “Hustler?”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 21, 2008. Read the original PDF.