No Shit, Dick Tracy

Anyone who thought that the invasion of Iraq was going to turn out any differently than it is was a complete fucking moron, as I stated multiple times during the lead-up to and execution of this foreign policy abortion.

Invade, break the infrastructure, demolish the security and lose billions. Check.

For the folks who say we should stay until we "win." You're fucking retarded. Unless we were to A) Turn it into a parking lot or B) Stay there and rule it for 7 or 8 generations, there was never going to be any "winning." This was a big yowling ball of feral cats from the beginning.

As I stated 5 years ago:

Are we safer with 600,000 - 1 million Iraqis dead? I doubt it. After 9/11, this country reserved the right to remember and hate without stint or discretion. What about the Iraqi shopkeeper who saw his son blown in half by good old American know-how, or the 8-year-old who saw his parents murdered in an elective war? Don't the friends and relatives of the dead and maimed in Iraq and Gaza have the same perpetual right to rage and hatred that I would if my toddlers were murdered by another country's bombs, or is the horrible choking, desperate grief of middle-eastern non-christians and non-Jews somehow less real, their bereavement less keen, because American exceptionalism has designated their sacrifice acceptable?

Let's for a moment pretend that these actions have made us safer, rather than simply hardening another generation of anti-American sentiment. I still can't look another father in the eye and say, "your child shall be killed, blown apart, so that mine can maintain the lifestyle to which he is accustomed," or to another son, "Your father will be burned to death with white phosphorous so that my old man can retire without stress." The price is too great.

Self-congratulatory, preening fucks like W.F. Buckley will prate about the existential threat; neocons think it's our divine right to conquer the world. The world bank, the military-industrial complex, and all their economic hit men think only of profit. I just can't get that orphaned father out of my head. I know how I would feel if my boys were taken from me. There is no amount of bloodshed that would sate me, no salve would tame the violence. Our American attitude, though, doesn't recognize our murders as real people or real deaths, just acceptable statistics in pursuit of our "interests." I don't know, maybe we've killed enough people to make us more secure for a little while. I don't think attrition is a long-term fix, though, unless we're willing to implement a Final Solution and simply kill everybody whose interests run contrary to ours. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before those we've brutalized gather enough strength and numbers to attack us again.

As Thomas McGrath said:

And now, you celebrated American jackasses:
You still want war?
Go let a hole in the head shed light on your darkling brain-
Remember Vietnam?

Go and be damned!
But don’t count on me for nothing you righteous
stupid sons of bitches !

much peace, for us anyway
tjb