[Peace-discuss] Happy Easter

[C. G. Estabrook]

"...Obama got his biggest applause when he told the crowd, 'It's time for Iraq 
to take responsibility for itself.'"

This is the line that national Democrats such as Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the 
gaggle of gormless bagmen, blue dogs and corporate shills in Congress have been 
pushing for years. The American invasion itself was "an extraordinary 
achievement," as Obama had the shameless brass to announce in Baghdad this week. 
"You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic 
country." And now it's up to these ungrateful, lazy, shiftless creatures to take 
advantage of the magnificent gift America has given them -- or else.

The moral depravity of this stance is breathtaking. Invade a country for no 
reason, kill a million of its people, drive four million into exile, destroy its 
infrastructure, plunge it into civil war, abet its "ethnic cleansing," loot its 
wealth, put it in the hands of religious extremists, unleash disease, poverty 
and social breakdown: this is an "extraordinary achievement," says the 
progressive paladin. And now the Iraqis must "take responsibility" for the hell 
on earth created by their invaders.

I find this wicked arrogance almost beyond description. Fortunately, Arthur 
Silber has limned it well, with his usual power and eloquence, and I want to 
quote him at length on this subject, because it bears repeating. But you should 
go to the original for the many links he provides to buttress and expand the 
piece. From Silber:

Thus speaks the new Imperial Master:

President Barack Obama said Sunday that the United States is in a position to 
place more responsibility in the hands of the Iraqis following provincial 
elections and a reduction in violence there.

"In conversations that I've had with the joint chiefs, with people, the 
commanders on the ground, I think that we have a sense now that the Iraqis just 
had a very significant election, with no significant violence there, that we are 
in a position to start putting more responsibility on the Iraqis," Obama told 
NBC television.

At the time of the initial invasion, Iraq posed no threat of any significance 
whatsoever to the United States. This blindingly obvious conclusion was clear to 
millions of people throughout the world -- "ordinary" people who examined the 
publicly available evidence, and who did not rely on "secret" knowledge, which 
goes by the viciously misnamed designation "intelligence," which "intelligence" 
is almost always wrong and which is never the basis for major policy decisions 
in any event.

The U.S. ruling class also knew that Iraq represented no threat of any 
consequence. They didn't care. They had entirely different objectives and 
concerns: the expansion and consolidation of American global hegemony. The world 
is the U.S. ruling class's oyster, and they will devour it. And you, and over a 
million innocent Iraqis, and whoever else proves troublesome. As a general rule, 
it is advisable not to place yourself in the path of a dangerously delusional 
homicidal maniac.

Thus, the United States government and almost all members of the ruling class -- 
with only two or three honorable exceptions -- embarked on a lengthy series of 
brutal, horrifying, profoundly immoral war crimes, and on a world historical 
genocide. Thus, all those members of the ruling class who have voted to continue 
and fund these crimes are war criminals. Barack Obama is a war criminal. Don't 
bother to argue with me: argue with the Nuremberg Principles.

How, then, in the name of all that is decent, humane and minimally civilized, 
does the President of the United States dare to say that "we are in a position 
to start putting more responsibility on the Iraqis"? "We" -- that is to say, the 
U.S. government and the ruling class -- are "in a position" to beg for 
forgiveness, which no decent human being should ever grant. There is nothing 
these criminals can ever do to earn it. "We are in a position" to make all those 
reparations possible, in whatever forms and whenever they can be offered. From 
an essay [I wrote] two and a half years ago:

Given the immense, incalculable destruction we have caused, we are obligated to 
provide significant financial aid to Iraq for the foreseeable future. In light 
of the damage this catastrophe has already caused to our economy, that is a 
formidable prospect -- but it is markedly superior to continuing to pour 
billions of dollars down the drain of this murderous occupation. And we must be 
responsible for our actions, and especially for our gravely mistaken and immoral 
ones. To the extent amends are possible, we must offer them. No amount of money 
will ever make up for the lives that have been lost and those that have been 
irrevocably damaged, but we must do whatever is possible. That will still not 
merit forgiveness for our actions, but at least we will have acted with a 
minimal sense of honor.

Beyond this, "we" should do nothing but get out.

Get out. Every single goddamned American. Out, within months. To hell with the 
disgusting lie about "combat troops." All Americans, out....

This has also been my position for years (here, for instance): The Iraq war is a 
crime; stop committing the crime, get out immediately, pay massive reparations 
for the evil you have done -- and be prepared to take in the horde of refugees 
who will flee the harsh and broken regime you have created in the ruins of the 
country you have destroyed. For you -- you -- are responsible for them now. (For 
more on what we have created with our "extraordinary achievement" in Iraq, see 
here, here, here and here.)

Silber goes on:

As I have noted in many essays, the arrogance and condescension of the U.S. 
government and our ruling class is overwhelming and unassailable. It is so 
deeply embedded in the world view of most Americans, who unthinkingly absorb it 
from almost all politicians and all major media voices, that we barely even 
notice it.

And from this blindness comes a new influx of support for America's murderous, 
militarist Terror Wars, as Justin Raimondo reports in his aptly-titled 
"Progressive Warmongers" [see original for links]:

That’s where the pro-war progressive think-tanks come in: their role is to forge 
a new pro-war consensus, one that commits us to a long-range "nation-building" 
strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. These are the Center for a New American 
Security, explicitly set up as home base for the "national security Democrats" 
who make up the party’s hawkish faction; Brookings; and, last but not least, the 
Center for American Progress, which was an oasis of skepticism when Team Bush 
was "liberating" Iraq, and a major critic of the occupation. Now the leadership 
of CAP is making joint appearances with the neocons over at the newly christened 
Foreign Policy Initiative and issuing lengthy white papers outlining their Ten 
Year Plan for the military occupation of Afghanistan.

Yes, it's somewhat amusing to watch liberal lions and lionesses mirroring the 
sycophancy that their partisan counterparts once lavished on Bush: an 
interesting, instructive foible of the political animal when it comes within the 
proximity of power. But it also has a far more serious, more dangerous side. The 
mainstream liberal acquiescence in Obama's Terror War "continuity" removes one 
of the few remaining bulwarks to the corrosive, witless and ultimately suicidal 
militarism that plagues us. It helps smooth the way for more disasters: more 
war, more hatred, more corruption, more tyranny, more pointless suffering, ruin, 
poverty and death.

To paraphrase their own paladin, it's time for liberals and progressives to 
"start putting more responsibility" on themselves, to see more clearly the 
reality in front of them -- just as they always urged the blind followers of the 
last wielder of imperial power to do -- and acknowledge the horrific 
consequences of the policies they are now so mindlessly and emotionally 
supporting...

http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1736-hero-blues-liberals-line-up-with-militarism.html#comments