The courageous Cindy Sheehan famously asked the coward George W. Bush to tell her what was the “Noble Cause” for which her son Casey had given his life as a soldier in Baghdad. Bush was too cowardly to answer, of course, but over on Eschaton, Atrios the dog-barker has a pithy little post that pretty nearly sums it up, and addresses Harold’s question about citizen and “real” journalism at the same time.
So we’ll spend a hell of a lot of money and lose a lot of lives presiding over an occupation and using our military to provide security for the private security which will be guarding the commercial interests involved in oil extraction.
And since it’s against Village etiquette to suggest that we we are engaged in an imperial colonial adventure, it will be almost impossible to debate the merits of our policies in Iraq or even have a vaguely honest discussion about what those policies are.
Like Atrios, I don’t think the war was about oil alone. It was about Bush’s vanity and sociopathy, the Cheney/Cheney cabal’s lust for war and conquest for the sake of war and conquest, the Cheney/Cheney cabal’s lust for war profits, and the Cheney/Cheney cabal’s hatred of the constitution and the idea of demoncracy. It was fueled by the infantile jingoism of a lazy and kitsch-loving populace and a reasonable admixture of patriotic altruism on the part of some of the troops.
But now it’s about the oil, mostly. And Bush’s vanity, and the Cheney/Cheney-cabal lust for war profits. But mostly it’s about the oil. Possession of which satisfies all the other subgoals.
1) Cindy Sheehan was out for Cindy Sheehan. No courage there. Hell she didn’t even have the decency to order a headstone for her son till almost a year later. Callous.
2) You argue about the wrong oil issue. If we went in for the oil, why is it that the Iraqis are honoring their prewar contracts to the Vietnames and Chinese for oil field development and sales? Hmmmmm??
JohnMc,
You and I have disagreed about plenty of other things, but your comments about Cindy Sheehan are just stupid. Saying she was “out for Cindy Sheehan”? What the hell was in it for her? Do you forget what the state of national discourse was about Iraq when she camped out in Crawford? With our chickenshit media and chickenshit compatriots too chickenshit to even ask what the war was about, after all the rationales given by Bush were proved to be not only wrong, but lies? When everybody else in the country was busy watching American Idol or putting magnets on their cars and watching made-for-TV movies about Jessica Lynch, Cindy Sheehan pulled back the curtain, like Dorothy did to Oz. And you say “no courage there.” Yeah, right.
And who gives a fuck about her son’s headstone? To some people that kind of thing is important, to others it’s not. But it’s none of my business, and it’s certainly none of yours. Casey Sheehan sure as hell doesn’t give a fuck whether or not he has a headstone. He’s dead. I think even bringing up the matter of his headstone is trite sentimentalism that’s beneath you.
She was his mother, she is a citizen, and she wants the truth about why he died. And you think it’s more important whether Casey got a headstone. Callous indeed.
As for the Iraqis honoring the prewar contracts, I don’t pretend to know what’s going one there. And really, who cares. Those deals are drops in bucket, and would have been invalidated by the agreement that Bush has been trying to ram don Congress’s and Al-Maliki’s throat– & which Iran, Sadr, and nationalist Sunnis have possibly blocked, we’ll see.
Did you read the article Atrios links to? Massive no-big contracts going to the very multinationals that Saddam nationalized when he came to power? What’s up with that? HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM???