[Courtesy of the Propaganda Remix Project.]
It's no more a surprise that the prowar right is now in full gloat over the rather clear victory of American forces in Iraq, and the gleeful response of the Iraqi populace, than it is that these events occurred in the first place.
Anyone who didn't think the Americans would win was an idiot. Anyone who didn't think the Iraqis would be glad to rid themselves of Saddam likewise was not particularly astute.
Not, of course, that there is much evidence of any more than a tiny handful of such fools arguing for those positions before the war. So why does the prowar right now assume that the antiwar left held such beliefs? Perhaps because it makes a handy strawman?
Yet this assumption is really at the root of all the gloating that is spewing forth from the talk-radio airwaves and throughout the prowar blogosphere right now. It only goes to reveal how little they understood the mainstream liberal antiwar position, as well the utter vacuity of their own arguments.
Make no mistake: It's a wonderful thing that the Iraqi people are now free from Saddam's brutal reign. Indeed, I can argue that I and many others on the left have been fomenting for regime change in Iraq for considerably longer than those on the right who seem to be relatively recent converts to this cause. Indeed, it would not be unreasonable to ask where they've been all these years, while we argued that the Reagan and Bush regimes should stop underwriting their tyranny.
However, declaring war on a sovereign nation simply because we wish to oust the dictators in charge has, heretofore at least, never been the way Americans operated. If it were, we'd have gone to war many times over in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe.
That was, however, before the advent of the Bush Doctrine. The essence of the new, post-9/11 American foreign policy is now: America is in charge of the world now, because we are stronger and more powerful than anyone else. If we decide you are a threat, or an obstacle to our foreign-policy goals, we will remove you. Violently. And our entire justification for doing so will rest on the Sept. 11 attacks.
Or as the voice of the new proto-fascist America, Darryl Worley, puts it: "Some say this country's just out looking for a fight / Well after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right."
When the prowar right is all done gloating, perhaps, it will be time to ask them: OK, what next?
If the justification for invading Iraq was to liberate its people, great. As it happens, there are a bunch of other countries living under perhaps even worse oppression. They too are ripe for "regime change." Do we go there next?
Indeed, some of these nations not only are under totalitarian regimes that cruelly oppress their own people, they also maintain ties to terrorists, and moreover, they also own weapons of mass destruction.
Consider, for instance, China and North Korea.
Both meet the criteria for which we went to war with Iraq, and worse. After all, we know they have nuclear weapons. There's no reason to believe they're not capable of selling these devices to Al Qaeda or other anti-American terrorists. And the barbarities these regimes visit upon their own people make Saddam look like Barney the Dinosaur.
Is there any reason these two -- instead of Syria and Iran, neither of which has demonstrated WMD capabilities -- shouldn't be next in line?
The fact that they're not clearly demonstrates, once again, that the war on Iraq was never about liberating its populace or bringing democracy to a benighted nation. It was never about weapons of mass destruction. It was never about its supposed ties to terrorism and the events of Sept. 11.
No, the Iraq war was always primarily about establishing the Bush Doctrine, which in turn was nothing less than making manifest the agenda of the Project for a New American Century. (There's been a great deal written in recent months about PNAC; for a quick, reasonably accurate summary about its role in the Iraq war, try this, from the CBC: Reality Check: A New American Century.)
Just in case the prowar right wasn't paying attention the first time around, let's reiterate: The mass of opposition to the war had nothing to do with whether we would win. Opposition was always about what kind of nation we are -- and what we will become -- as we combat terrorism.
The Bush Doctrine is hardly anything more than Darwinist "might makes right" bullying, clothing itself in the language of an aggrieved victim. Many Americans were capable of seeing that. And they have a more traditional, and certainly more enlightened, understanding of what global citizenship really is about. They made up the bulk of the people out there marching against Bush's war.
So Bush has won his cynical little war -- one it's clear he chose because he not only could win it, he could sell it. (North Korea -- the far more clear and present danger -- is however a different proposition on both counts.)
That does not, however, vindicate the Bush Doctrine. Before that happens, we're going to have view the long-term results.
To date, the PNAC's plans still appear to be nothing less than a megalomaniacal scheme to rule the world, and in doing so turn nearly every other citizen on the planet into an enemy of America. The cheers for American soldiers in Baghdad would suggest otherwise, but then, the seething hatred for our nation nearly everywhere else in the Arab and Muslim worlds has multiplied as well -- we just aren't hearing about that on Fox News.
Moreover, the majority of those of us opposed to this war continue to do so because it still represents a dangerous and ultimately illogical brand of new American imperialism. It's easy to see that it has certain short-term benefits, such as liberating a handful of nations from their former oppressors. Its long-term consequences, though, are only now being reckoned. Which nation shall we go a-liberating next? Another with vast oilfields, perhaps?
The real danger the Bush Doctrine represents -- of inspiring a fresh round, perhaps even generations, of even more lethal terrorism -- has hardly subsided with the fall of Baghdad.
The gloating of the jingoes may drown out those fears for a day or two. But they will return.
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