At Home He's A Tourist

Four Years Later
By Jason Pancake


Since the Iraq War began in March 2003, over 3200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq, 800 private contractors have been killed, well over 100,000 Iraqi citizens have died due to the occupation, and thousands of Americans and Iraqis have been injured. Billions and billions of dollars have been spent, while private contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater have made ridiculous amounts of money by ripping off the government. A solid majority of the nation thinks the war is not going well and people support a withdrawal 59% to 33%. Despite a slim majority of Democrats in the House and Senate, what is there to show for people’s frustrations? Only a resolution to slowly start withdrawing troops… in August 2008 . This bill doesn’t really mean much because it barely passed the House (218-212) and Senate (50-48) and everyone knew that the President would veto it.

Howard Zinn, author of important books like The People’s History of the United States , has written a nice article about this withdrawal debate and arguments about why this timetable means little. Indeed, even though many politicians acknowledge that something different needs to be done, we are still continuing to do what we are doing. It is like a cartoon where we are in a boat in the water with a bunch of holes, and we are trying to plug the holes one by one with our fingers and toes. Of course, the water keeps pouring in because there are too many holes and not enough fingers or toes. Zinn’s article can be found at http://www2.blogger.com/www.progressive.org/mag_zinn0507 Zinn makes the point of how the general public has to make the difference and take action because “we are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth.”

Indeed the outcome of this war, as with past wars and injustices and civil rights, will be up to us, the citizens of this country. The only reason the concept of withdrawing troops even got this far is because the people of this country made their voices (and votes in November) heard that they wanted a change. Unfortunately, it wasn’t loud enough to cause real action to be taken. While it’s true that we should be upset that elected representatives (especially Democrats) are not more assertive about standing up against something that evidence has shown to be wrong, but we have to look at it from their side too. Politicians need a lot of things in addition to voter support to preserve their jobs (money, political allies, etc.), and the anti-war members of Congress and the Senate are still not the clear majority. There were massive protests that eventually helped end the Vietnam War, but there just haven’t been the widespread outcries here with this war. In polls, people state that they are against the war, but the action hasn’t been there. This can partly be due to how today’s armed forces are “volunteers” that make up a relatively small portion of the overall population, and there is no draft that directly affects the average citizen. Many people don’t really realize how much sacrifice and hardships fall on a small percentage of the population. The extent of many people’s sacrifice has been $3.95 they paid to slap a yellow sticker on the bumper of their car. Also, even though the country is racking up a major deficit (that will eventually need to be paid off), there has been hardly any financial sacrifice required of the average person. No taxes have gone up to pay for this war and people have been told that we can beat those insurgents by buying more stuff at the mall. Watch this video as the President literally says to go shopping more. Here is the transcript: “As we work with Congress in the coming year to chart a new course in Iraq and strengthen our military to meet the challenges of the 21st century, we must also work together to achieve important goals for the American people here at home. This work begins with keeping our economy growing…And I encourage you all to go shopping more.”

The administration still makes the same old arguments that leaving Iraq would “embolden the terrorists,” but what does it tell the “evil doers” when we continue to stubbornly do the exact same thing by sending our young men and women to their deaths and burn through billion dollars a month with no clear intention of what our solution is. The evidence is clear that so much of what the public was told was wrong: Iraq had WMDs, Saddam was involved in 9/11, we will be greeted with flowers and chocolate, we don’t need 100,000’s of troops, the insurgency is in its last throes, the troops don’t need fancy armor, and the list goes on. At the same time, what does it tell the Administration (and the “terrorists”) when a majority of the American public claims it is against the direction of the war and voted for a number of new Representatives, yet the Congress, Senate, and the American public still can’t take action amend these mistakes? As Howard Zinn says in his article: “It reminds me of the physician in Europe in the early nineteenth century who decided that bloodletting would cure pneumonia. When that didn't work, he concluded that not enough blood had been let.” The blood is still flowing.