| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Dharmananda" |
| Date: |
12 Dec 2004 04:51:38 AM |
| Object: |
Whether Myth or Lie, the Evil Results are the Same |
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041212
NEWS/412120505/1264/NEWS0103
http://tinyurl.com/4f2mj
Myth of the just war in Iraq may finally be fading away
Cynthia Tucker
Herald Tribune, 12-12-04
Never underestimate the power of myth. It can solder broken resolve, fuel
astounding acts of courage and overwhelm evidence and reason.
That's why the U.S. military struggles so hard to create myths to shore up
support for its dubious enterprise in Iraq. Jessica Lynch -- young and
blond -- seemed to come straight from central casting to play the part of
courageous heroine. Only later did we learn that she never fired a shot.
Never mind. The myth served its purpose.
So has the Bush administration's convoluted explanation for the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein. It doesn't hang together logically; its internal
contradictions are too great, its fabrications too obvious. Nevertheless,
the fanciful tale of a heroic and just America tracking down and killing
the terrorists who struck us on 9/11 -- or, even if they didn't, who would
strike us if they had a chance -- served well enough to get President Bush
re-elected.
It has also served to keep rank-and-file soldiers and their families back
home squarely behind the president. Few soldiers or their families have
publicly expressed doubts about the Iraqi mission, despite clear evidence
of a con job -- from pre-war assurances that they would be greeted as
liberators to a post- invasion back-door draft that will keep many overseas
past their tours.
That could be changing, however. Even compelling myths can wear thin when
bleak reality eats away at them every day. That reality reared up several
days ago in a so-called "town hall meeting" Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld held with soldiers in Kuwait. The troops peppered Rumsfeld with
pointed questions about inadequate equipment and extensions of duty.
Painful reality hits hard, too, when families see horribly maimed young men
and women who will never recover anything resembling a normal life. While
the numbers of war dead have been faithfully reported -- even as the Bush
administration has deflected attention from them -- the number of
casualties, closing in on 10,000, has gone little noticed.
They've been shuttled quietly away to military hospitals for additional
treatment and rehabilitation, though it is difficult to imagine that some
will ever be able go home. The New England Journal of Medicine tells of an
airman who survived even though he lost both legs, his right hand and part
of his face. "How he and others like him will be able to live and function
remains an open question," the article noted.
And the Journal article did not address another large category of
casualties: the emotionally shattered young men and women who found the
horrors of war more overwhelming than they expected. Many will struggle
with psychic scars for the rest of their lives.
These burdens are borne by a relatively small sliver of the American
population -- the working class. Enlisted men and women tend to come from
households earning between $32,000 and $33,500, according to a 1999 Defense
Department study. (The median American household income is $43,300.) The
poorest of the poor don't go; neither do the affluent.
It is odd enough that so many working-class Americans have been seduced by
Bush's claims that he's a regular guy looking out for their interests,
when, in fact, his policies overwhelmingly benefit well-off families and
wealthy corporations. It is downright weird that so many of them have been
taken in by his story of a just war when their sons and daughters, husbands
and wives -- not the scions of the wealthy -- are the ones paying the
ultimate price for it.
This contradiction simply cannot hold much longer, and perhaps it won't have
to. Bush may be planning to use the cover of January elections in Iraqi to
declare victory and leave -- whether the country is stable or not.
But if large numbers of U.S. troops are ordered to stay in Iraq for another
four years, as Rumsfeld recently suggested, you can expect to see signs
that the hard truth is puncturing the romantic myth of a just war easily
won. Those doing the grieving and dying are unlikely to go on willingly
playing their part in the fantasy.
UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-
Constitution. She can be reached by e-mail: cynthia@ajc.com.
--
Triratanam sharanam gaccami
Dharmananda
http://mysite.verizon.net/res6zeam/american-buddhist/news.html
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