A Defeat Bred in Deceit

u201CAnyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.u201D

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

When Bush decided, prior to September 11, to attack Iraq, he committed himself to lies and deceit. As his British co-conspirators realized, only victory could save them from the consequences.

On June 27, General George Casey, US commander of the u201Cmultinational coalitionu201D in Iraq, told morning TV audiences that the conflict in Iraq u201Cwill not be settled on the battlefield.u201D On June 26, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told TV audiences that u201Ccoalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency.u201D The insurgency, Rumsfeld said, might u201Cgo on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years.u201D

These admissions give the lie to Vice President Cheney’s claim that the insurgency is in u201Cits last throes.u201D

Would Congress have let Bush invade Iraq if Congress had known that it would not be a 3-week war but a 12-year war?

What kind of fantastic lie or gross incompetence caused a 12-year war to be marketed as a 3-week war?

How can any people, no matter how deceived and deluded, support a government capable of such miscalculation or deceit?

Would the Washington Post and the New York Times have been such willing conduits of neoconservative propaganda against Iraq it anyone on either paper had enough education to realize the catastrophe that hubris was creating? What if either paper had possessed enough of a reporter’s skepticism to ask a question?

General Casey’s and Secretary Rumsfeld’s remarks make it clear that the Defense Department has given up the prospect of military victory: The situation in Iraq, Gen. Casey said, u201Cwill ultimately be settled by negotiation and inclusion in the political process.u201D Rumsfeld says the US troops are being killed and maimed in order to u201Ccreate an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency.u201D

After three years of fighting, Rumsfeld still doesn’t understand that the Iraqi people are the insurgency. Is Rumsfeld still clinging to the myth that the insurgency is an outside element injected into Iraq?

When will the moronic Bush administration realize that it is creating the environment in which the insurgency is prevailing?

Many readers write to me that Bush and his neocon crazies are Israel’s patsies. An equally good case can be made that Bush and his crazy neocons are Osama bin Laden’s agents. In a recent speech at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, Secretary of State Condi Rice repudiated America’s 60-year-old policy of Middle East stability and declared: u201CNow, we are taking a different course.u201D

Rice, being completely ignorant of the Middle East, believes that the path to democracy is through instability. But, of course, instability is exactly what bin Laden wants. The instability that the Bush administration is creating will unseat our puppets in Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden intends to pick up the pieces.

The Bush administration has squandered America’s diplomatic, economic, and military power and is heading for defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the Middle East. Bush’s invasion of Iraq is fast becoming one of the greatest strategic blunders in history.

The Best of Paul Craig Roberts