Memories II - June 2003 - How many more?

Shock and awe indeed! The sheer stupidity of the Bush administration's headlong rush to war is best demonstrated by the idiotic belief that there was no need to plan for what happens after. The problem with the "Mission Accomplished" banner is that the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld cabal made the mistake of believing that the "mission" ended with the battle for Baghdad. This is a case in which the US planned to win a battle not a war. Having won the battle, victory had been accomplished because it the mission had been defined on terms that were narrowly idealogical and bore no relation whatsoever to the actual tactical or strategic situation.

This did no have to be the case. The French told George Bush he was getting in over his head. So did the Germans and virtually every other important US ally and strategic partner. So did the overwhelming numbers of people who marched to oppose this war - all over the world - before it even began. Bush simply refused to listen to anything.

I noted this on June 25, 2003:

To the Editor

Before the war it was obvious that the US was prepared to win the battles, but unprepared to to win the peace. Today, every headline provides further evidence the Bush administration's failed to consider or prepare properly for our "victory" in Iraq. Thomas Friedman's June 25 op-ed column "Bad Planning" (along with many of his excellent columns) drives this point home.

Iraq is deteriorating daily. Unemploment, malnutrition and disease are rampant. There is no electricity or safe drinking water in large parts of the country.

US troops are teaching democracy to the Iraqis by censoring the press, shooting at demonstrators, enforcing curfews, and arbitrarily entering private homes at gunpoint. Our effort to select those Iraqi's who will form and serve in a new government is about as democratic as an
election in China. Our award of reconstruction contracts to US, rather than indigenus Iraqi, businesses is similarly undemocratic, and of dubious legality.

The Iraqi people, who welcomed us with open arms, grow angrier by the day. The result is increasing casualties and deaths among US troops. It is only a matter of time before more US soldiers will have died trying to maintain the peace, than fighting the war.

The administration claims it had no warning that it would be harder to maintain peace than to oust Saddam Hussein. The truth is that President Bush was informed of this before the war
by our longtime allies, France and Germany, and by the vast numbers of American people who had the courage to demonstrate their opposition.

President Bush ignored the advice of all but the handful of idealogues he had chosen for his cabinet. Were it not for his heedless rush to sound-bites and photo-ops, our sons and daughters in uniform might not now be giving their lives, fighting a losing war against anarchy, starvation, disease, fanaticism and the growing anger of the Iraqi people.

The only question is how many US soldiers are going to die before the American people finally express their anger at this badly planned, and poorly executed debacle.

Four and a half years and nearly 4,000 soldiers later, I am still wondering how long this can go on.