Bush’s War, The Salvadoran Option, and the Pooping Robot

I don’t post on politics nearly as much as I think about it. Part of this may be a lingering bit of election fatigue, but mostly it is because so many other blogs do it better and more consistently, like The Left End of the Dial, Daily Kos, Incoherent Blather, Talking Points Memo, and Matthew Yglesias, just to name a handful. I’m too scatterbrained to focus solely on politics, music, or anything else, for that matter; plus, I wouldn’t want to tie myself to a format in which I couldn’t point my dear reader to Robodump, the pooping robot, if that’s what happened to be on my mind that day.

I’ve grown to learn that I just don’t have the time to scrawl out a post every time I’m outraged by another news story, for in Bushworld, outrage and horror are all too commonplace.

Still, there are moments when said outrage supersedeth, and the horrors become new again. That’s what happened when I read about The Salvadoran Option now being discussed for Iraq. I’m old enough to remember the protests over Reagan’s policies in Central America, but I’m young enough that I never really understood just exactly what they were protesting.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.

Exactly when do we admit that we long ago ceded the high moral ground with this godforsaken war? Certainly our unwavering Commander-in-Chief would never admit to such a thing. In the end, he always comes back to the unprovable: that the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein; he did it again this week. Is it really, Mr. President? Read this and then lie to me again. What, do you think we're in kindergarten? JUST WHAT FUCKING PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON??!!

This post, from the Whiskey Bar blog, is so horrifyingly thought provoking I choose to reprint it in its entirety:

Scenes From the Bunker

Mr Powell's bleak assessment, less than three weeks before Iraqis are due to elect a parliament, reflects what advisers close to the administration and former officials describe as an understanding in the State Department and Pentagon of the depth of the crisis. But, they say, this is not a view accepted by President George W. Bush . . .

According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. “We're losing,” Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.

Financial Times
Powell gives bleak assessment of Iraq security problems
January 12, 2005

Albert Speer, in charge of armament production, drew up a memorandum to Hitler on January 20 — the twelfth anniversary of Hitler's coming to power — pointing out the significance of the loss of Silesia. 'The war is lost,' his report began, and he went on in his cool and objective manner to explain why . . .

The Fuehrer, Guderian later related, glanced at Speer's report, read the first sentence and then ordered it filed away in his safe. He refused to see Speer alone, saying to Guderian: “He always has something unpleasant to say to me. I can't bear that."

William L. Shirer
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
1959

Need I say more? I'm certainly not saying Bush is as bad a guy as Hitler was, but his track record for handling wars is not looking much better. Apples and oranges? Perhaps.

But this war in Iraq is SO far beyond the point of being about oil or geopolitics or Vietnam or an election or saving face. For the first time, and without a hint of hyperbole, I tremble in fear that this war could actually destroy our nation as we know it.

And here I am, talking about pooping robots.

N/P The 101 – Green Street