a new round of awful news<\/a>. For those not paying attention, well, good luck to you.\nTo me, I suppose, the news points out the ludicrousness of mentally framing a war as good guys versus bad guys. Already this war has admittedly descended into the US-led coalition against half a dozen ragtag resistance units mostly unconnected with the Baathists. In fact, the good guys have (more or less) taken Baathists off the bad guy list, and we can’t really put the Sadr forces onto it, as the puppet government will need their imprimatur. There are still ‘bad guys’ to fight in Iraq, but it seems that most of the fighting now is not against them.\n
And now the good guys are exposed as harboring criminal torturers. Not only is this morally repugnant beyond my belief, but it clearly works against our own interests. Works powerfully against our own interests. So powerfully that I am forced to give up my own hope, that we will be able to show our good-guy-ness in deeds. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t see any way to it, any way that we can turn this to the better. Clearly, even a new and sincere attempt (after this disgusting Administration is cleared out, and with it the war profiteers it works for) by the US to rebuild Iraq will be faced with hostility, violence, and sabotage.\n
I think we did have a chance to redeem the invasion by building a paradise in Iraq. I think we could have taken a bad situation and used American wealth, American enterprise, American knowhow, and American manpower to make the world a better place. We didn’t. We used American guns, and American warplanes, and, it seems, foreign mercenaries, to destroy the possibility of good faith.\n
Where, then do we go from here? I don’t know. I don’t know.\n
There is, of course still hope. There are many people who are not only much better informed than I am but smarter. Some of them have plans that seem hopeless to me, but then I have been wrong before. I see nothing in them, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing in them.\n
I must also say this. Those soldiers and their mercenary colleagues have shamed America and shamed me. The commanders and the companies that hired them and allowed them to do what they did shamed America and shamed me. And George W. Bush, President of the United States, who bears personal responsibility for the conduct of those commanders and who approved the use of those companies, has shamed America and shamed me. I apologize now, to the world, for my part in allowing him to take office. I could have done more. I will do more to prevent his administration from continuing in office, and to prevent another like it from taking office.\n
,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It seems Your Humble Blogger will need a new tag line. Just when Your Humble Blogger was starting to feel the slightest bit chipper, there comes a new round of awful news. For those not paying attention, well, good luck…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17004,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995\/revisions\/17004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}