WATERLOO by David Podvin

[BrklynLiberal]

The American conquest of Iraq has become an ever-worsening nightmare for the occupying force. Soon, even the corporate media’s master fabulists will be unable to misrepresent the failure as being a success. Although there is much drama yet to occur, the final chapter of this immorality play was written well before it began. In the end, our empire will have suffered a humiliating defeat, and viewed from the patriotic perspective that will be a very good thing.

While it is tragic that many more American soldiers will die in vain, courtesy of George W. Bush, the future would be infinitely worse had the war gone according to plan. If the United States military had successfully pacified the Iraqis, thereby facilitating an occupation that was relatively easy for America, Iraq would have been just the first domino to fall. Iran would have toppled next, and then Kazakhstan, and then anywhere else Islam and petroleum intersect to provide the pretext for corporate plunder.

That Iraq has become a quagmire should be viewed as a painful yet welcome development by those Americans who do not want our country to be the national equivalent of the Hell’s Angels. Periodically throughout our history, the American majority has had to relearn the importance of what Dr. Phil and international law books term “boundaries”. Having again stormed into a smaller nation that posed no threat, Americans will now pay the excruciating price of having forgotten our most recent lesson in humility.

Three decades have passed since the United States endured a military comeuppance at the hands of poorly armed but highly motivated Vietnamese peasants. For a while, the shame of the Vietnam debacle acted as a deterrent whenever our nation contemplated bullying others. However, as that recollection eroded with time, Americans reverted to embracing the old standard that might makes right. The Bush administration currently has the consent of the governed as it traverses the globe overthrowing democracies in the name of freedom and killing defenseless people for the stated purpose of saving them.

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