I know I am cynical, but after hearing Bush’s speech last night, it is impossible to support any other conclusion. Bush proposes to return another 21,000 American soldiers to Iraq, with the very limited and specific goal of “pacifying Baghdad,” with the help of Iraqi troops. Of course, we’ve done this before, and with even more troops, and as soon as our soldiers leave, the “resistance” retakes control (or at least prevents any sense of government control).

What’s going on here? Our soldiers are part of an unwanted occupying army, with only the vaguest of goals. The Iraqis know that the “real agenda” is to insure control of their oil by American corporations, and to prevent their election of a government we don’t like. It’s hard to imagine any Iraqi citizen choosing to join an Iraqi army or police force, knowing that they are nothing more than servants of the unwanted occupying force.

Where are the comparisons? America in Iraq is not Nazi Germany in France, but it’s hard to avoid the comparison: an occupying army taking a nation by force, removing citizens in the night and keeping them in secret camps, refusing to obey international treaties, and soliciting local thugs and hooligans to become “police” and wield abusive control over their neighbors.

Oddly enough, it is the past season of “Battlestar Galactica” that seems closest to this situation: the evil robotic/cyborg/cloned Cylons conquer the last human outpost and impose conditions that seem almost completely identical to those in Iraq. Who do we root for? The underground resistance, of course, and they win in the end because evil occupying armies with vague goals are never allowed to win in literature.

We won’t win, and we can’t win, the war in Iraq. It’s impossible to win a war that has no objectives. Iraq is a country with a majority of citizens who don’t share our values — wait, no, that’s not right.

The people in Iraq are just like us. They want all the same things we want: freedom, control, education, security, and respect and tolerance for their religious belief. Like America, Iraq has some political and religious extremists and some opportunistic criminals who will take advantage of the right situation. America’s war in Iraq is “the perfect storm” for those extremists, and creates an indefensible target for bad people to attack.

Now, our Congress is faced with a politically difficult but morally simple decision: whether to allow more troops to be sent into Iraq without any genuine new mission or objective, and without any prospect of success, or to oppose the president and promptly be blamed for the “failure” of this war when our troops are finally withdrawn and the bloody civil war that we started expands and probably results in installation of an oppressive, extremist government in Iraq.

The irony is that if Bush and Cheney had actually announced five years ago that we would invade Iraq in order to secure American control of Iraq’s oil resources, or to prevent control of Iraq by an oppressive, extremist government, their failure would now be absolutely complete. Instead, they claimed then that the war was to prevent the building of weapons of mass destruction, and when that claim was proven unfounded and untrue, they claimed that the war was about removing an evil dictator from power and returning Iraq to its citizens. Since we wanted to choose which citizens would be in control, of course, the outcome was always guaranteed: prompt revolution and disposal of any government we support, as soon as our troops are out of sight.

Finally, I notice that each time I type the name of this conflict, I am disturbed, because “the war in Iraq” is hardly the right name for a war. But we don’t want to admit that this is America’s war “against” or “on” Iraq, and we can’t figure out what to call the force that we are at war with, because we don’t really know who we are at war with (or at least we don’t want to admit it).

America’s war against Iraq is over, and if we were ambivalent or ashamed of our role in Vietnam, then we should be outraged about our nation’s war on Iraq. It’s hard to imagine how the world might have been made more safe after September 11, 2001, but it’s easy to see how much less safe our president has made our nation and our world by abusing the memory of that tragic event.

– Mark J. Welch

Last Updated on 01/11/2007

My outrage is not at the criminals who sought to bring terror to daily American life, but at the Americans who have accepted terror and violence as proper responses.

All around me, a bumper-sticker mentality takes hold: vengeance, retribution, alienation.

My country is now in a second week of bombing attacks on Afghanistan, a country already ruined by two decades of wars driven by outsiders. Panicked Americans worry that every package or envelope may contain anthrax, and every man with brown skin or strange attire may be a terrorist.

In the news, an airline “understands” why pilots refuse to fly with Arab-Americans in the first class cabin: the fear is understandable, they say (prejudice is okay, they imply).

One of my state’s Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein, proposes that no new student visas be issued for six months, barring new foreign students, while new procedures are put in place.  The solution to attacks by those who do not understand us, she suggests, is to close out those who wish to do so.

Are we insane? Why do we respond to senseless violence with more senseless violence? Why do we respond to prejudice with more prejudice? We cannot repel ignorance with more ignorance.

Terror is a clever tool:

• Terror makes us feel less connected.
• We feel less safe, so we do not explore new places or new opportunities.
• We back away.
• Fear makes us more suspicious of strangers.
• Our fear makes us leap to conclusions more quickly: this person is not like me, he is Other, he is Like Them, I must avoid him, fear him.
• Some of us react with prejudice or even anger and violence.
• Fear separates.
• Terror divides.

I am not immune. No one is immune to the contagion of terror. But we must resist, we must stand up and refuse to accept this shroud of terror. We must smile, we must go on, we must strive to be fair and true.

And perhaps most important, we must refuse to spread the contagion of terror. Our nation should not rain terror down on Afghanistan, or Iran, or on our own citizens. Our president should not announce on television that a terrorist suspect is “guilty” before there any trial, nor even an indictment.

This is not America. It is the shroud of terror on America. Let us lift it and cast it aside.

My First European Vacation

I was in Paris on September 11, 2001.  It was the last day of my first vacation in seven years, and my first trip overseas.  I left the Musee D’Orsay in late afternoon, then took a Seine river cruise, disembarking at the Eiffel Tower.  I rode the elevators to the top, and took a bunch of photographs, then descended as twilight approached. I made my way back to my hotel.  I planned to be asleep before 9:00 p.m., so I could arise before sunrise.  I would be taking the Chunnel Train back to London (where I spent the first four of my six vacation days) and then make my way to Heathrow for a mid-afternoon departure to return home to California.

I turned on the television as I packed my suitcase, occasionally glancing at news coverage of a tall burning building. Then the new camera’s angle changed, and I realized it was the World Trade Center in New York.  I couldn’t understand the French-language broadcast, so I scanned the dial and found CNN.  I then learned that two commercial airliners had been hijacked and crashed into the twin towers, which collapsed a short time later.  (Paris is six hours ahead of New York, so I picked up the news about 4 hours after the event).

Terrorism had come to America.

The hotel clerk confirmed that my flight was cancelled, and helped me reschedule to depart Sunday morning instead.  He checked to confirm that the Eurostar trains were still running, but with tightened security requiring an earlier arrival at the terminal.

I took the train back to London the next morning, and booked a cheap hotel for four nights.

My first four days in London had been hectic.  I had rushed to see a half-dozen museums, several plays, and an endless array of tourist sites and interesting neighborhoods.  I had taken hundreds of digital snapshots.

The next seven days were nearly opposite: I was relaxed and made few definite plans. I saw more plays, and took many more pictures.  (The exception was a bout of food poisoning that caused me to miss my Saturday morning departure in favor of a visit to a hospital.)

I finally returned home on Wednesday, September 19th.