We have lost.

[Tansy_Gold]

Those three words are probably more difficult for George W. Bush to say even than "I made a mistake" or "I lied."

"We have lost" makes the other statements irrelevant. "We have lost" means George W. Bush, as president of the United States and commander in chief of its armed forces, must change his course of action. "We have lost" is a statement of fact, a statement of reality as accepted by the speaker. When George W. Bush says, if he ever does, "We have lost," he will be forced to act, to make decisions, and to live by them every bit as he did after his untrue "mission accomplished" speech in May 2003.

"We have lost" means there is no practical sense in continuing the fight. It means the troops -- and the civilian contractors specifically connected to the military operations -- must be brought home. They must be brought home as quickly, and as safely, as possible, and the repatriation must be done without regard to saving face or making the retreat look like a victory.

"We have lost" also means, unfortunately, that lots of blame will be thrown around. "We have lost" does not mean George W. Bush will personally accept any of that blame or allow his cronies and friends and supporters and sycophants and beneficiaries of him imperial largesse (read, Cheney and all the corporate vampires of the war-profiteers club) to do so. They will shift the blame and weasel out of any responsibility for the next forty years, if not longer. But their weaseling and excuse-making and blame-shifting will not cause the deaths of any more in an American-fought war in Iraq.

"We have lost" also means, unfortunately, that we will leave a horrendous mess behind us in Iraq. If we stay, the mess will not be cleaned up; our presence in Iraq is fueling the sectarian fighting as well as providing handy targets for those who simply want us out of their country so they can continue either their lives or their civil war in peace. If we go, it may get worse or it may get better, but even the slight chance that our exit may improve things ought to be a small incentive to get out. Slight chance, slim chance, tiny ray of hope: aren't they all better than what we've got now?

"We have lost" also means, unfortunately, that we may be charged with some responsibility for the horrendous mess we've left behind. And in this case, "charged" may have a distinctly monetary aspect. As we bemoan the half-trillion of our tax dollars blown up in this vain attempt to do whatever it was George W. Bush hoped to do in Iraq, we tend not to examine what might happen if the international community of which we are part whether we want to be or not exacts payment to repair at least some of the damage we've done. Those payments -- whether they are in the form of higher oil prices, direct restitution to whatever country or countries Iraq becomes, or whatever -- those payments may place an unfamiliar burden on the American people (who are, in effect, the American government).

"We have lost" means we admit we tried to do something and we failed. It means we admit to and accept our own vulnerability, our vincibility, our mistakes, our errors, our poor judgment, our arrogance, our stupidity. Indeed, "we have lost" means we must admit that we are human, capable of human error.

"We have lost" also means that despite all their public displays of faith George W. Bush and his administration did not have the approval and support and assistance of their god. The "higher father" who told George W. Bush this invasion and occupation of Iraq was the right thing to do either lied. . . or was just a figment of Mr. Bush's imagination. This repudiation by "God" of the Bush imperialism may remove the last major segment of the American population that still supports him: the devout christian fundamentalists who saw this war as a route to the end times and the rapture.

"We have lost" may also cause the last minor segment of the American population that still supports the administration to fall away, too. They are the ultra-right-wing white supremacists for whom the Iraq invasion was just another part of their war on everyone but themselves. They're the "how did our oil get under their sand?" crowd. They're the ones who rarely enter the military but often enter militias. They're the ones who, like the Nazis of the 1930s and 1940s, took pride in the deaths of their children who fought for a good cause, believing that they fought for the rights and privileges only of white Americans. These Americans do not like to lose, and they will excoriate the administration not only for losing, but for admitting they have lost.

"We have lost" will also afford those who opposed the administration the leverage to jump in and begin fixing all the problems it has created in the past six years. Once the ruling party had to admit "we have lost" power in the House and Senate, things began to change. Already the House has passed legislation raising the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade. It's not enough in some minds, but at least it's something. By the same token, a "we have lost" regarding the war will remove obstacles that have prevented progress in other areas: perhaps everything from solving problems in Iraq and Iran and Syria and North Korea to stopping the genocide in Darfur and the spread of nuclear weapons and the proliferation of genetically-modified food crops and a cure for AIDS.

"We have lost" does not mean the 3017 (or more, by the time I finish writing this) American servicepeople who have died in this debacle will have died in vain. The value of their sacrifice must now be measured in what we. whether we are Americans or not, learn from the mistakes made. "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want," is a favorite old saying of mine. We can't bring back Casey Sheehan or Lori Piestewa or any of the others; what we can do is see to it that no more of their comrades in arms are sacrificed. The only way to do that is to admit "We have lost" and we need to get out of there.

"We have lost" allows the U.S. -- and even the current administration -- to take some dignity away with them that an utter defeat or forced retreat would not. In a way, "We have lost" followed by swift withdrawal is not much different from the strategy used during the Vietnam debacle of declaring victory and then leaving. It's not likely that the American people, having watched the debate over the Iraq war unfold over a much shorter and more intense period of time, will be fooled by a declaration of victory. As biased as the media may be in favor of the administration, they are not likely to paint a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq as any kind of victory.

"We have lost" is the only way to effect any kind of productive new direction for the United States as a global military power. To be sure, dropping a few nuclear weapons on Iraq -- or Iran or Syria, for that matter -- might result in a "victory" for the administration. But it would so horribly alter the reputation and even the self-image of this country that it would not be "productive." "We have lost" would, however, prevent the kind of open-ended military spending that effectively bankrupted the Soviet Union -- another lesson of recent history the current administration failed to learn.

"We have lost" is not a good way to end the current (mis)adventure, but it is a way. And maybe it is the first step in a twelve-step program to healing not only this emotionally war-torn nation, but the physically war-torn in Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia and Bolivia and Sri Lanka and Chechnya. . . . . .


Tansy Gold

[Philosoraptor]

1. Years ago.

[Burma Jones]

2. We lost back in December of 2000

It's all been downhill since.......We'll see what the new Congress can do about it. There are more than a few Republicans ready to turn on the Chimp..........

[Virginia Dare]

3. It's the same twisted mentality we used re. Viet Nam...

and look how many lives we threw away because of our stupid, stubborn, ignorant pride. Hey, guess what America. We invaded a country that had done NOTHING to us to deserve it. We invaded them because of our own greed and avarice. We destroyed their infrastructure and their civil society. Now they're kicking our asses and there's NOTHING we can do about it. WE LOST, IT'S OVER. TIME TO MAKE PEACE AND MOVE ON. Now, is that so hard? Yes, apparently it is. :cry:

[partylessinOhio]

4. America has lost. Weep for her.

The American people lost when the Supreme Court stepped in and stopped the count of the votes in Florida in 2000. The avalanche that followed has brought us to the delicate condition of America today.

The invasion of Iraq was all Bush all the time and is all his. He and the Supreme Court that selected HIM will have to shoulder that burden not America the nation under distress.

[Tansy_Gold]

6. Shouldering the burden

Unfortunately, the burden of post-Iraq will not fall on the five supreme court justices and the boooosh administration: it will indeed fall on the American people. Yes, even those of us who opposed the war, who opposed the administration. Those of us who marched and voted and campaigned and sacrificed and wept and bled.

We permitted it all to happen, and that's why so many of us, even "us" on the left side of the divide, have to bear the responsibility. We didn't do enough to stop it.

What would have been "enough"? Would it have been violent insurrection? Assassination? Was there anyone among us who hated, loathed, despised, even feared the administration enough to give her/his life to take out the monster? No, even those of us who hated him didn't hate him enough to do that. Better to let him live, better to live in his regime, than to risk our own lives getting rid of him.

Sure, there were those of us who knew this war was lost before it began. There were those of us who knew boooosh was a disaster waiting to happen long before he'd even been nominated. We knew, but we couldn't/wouldn't/didn't do enough to stop him.

and of course there are those who have a larger share of the blame -- those who supported him, who voted for him, who silenced and intimidated us.

I think of the arrogant young man I met at a protest in Glendale, Arizona, in August 2005: he stated he wasn't going to enlist because the army didn't need him. They had all the recruits they needed, and the war would soon be over anyway. Never mind that it had been going on for two and a half years at that point. Never mind that even the mainstream media was full of reports of recruiting shortfalls. Never mind that the truth of the matter was this young man didn't think he had any responsibility other than to drive a gas-guzzling car, pursue some lucrative non-productive career, and call anyone who disagreed with him a traitor. Few of my fellow protesters would take him on, leaving me to challenge him almost alone, while he had half a dozen supporters to shout me down.

There are so many of us, here on DU and elsewhere and I readily include myself, who do not know what it means to treasure freedom over life. We have never had to make that choice. We watch the reports of the suicide bombers, whether in Iraq or Jerusalem or Cairo or anywhere, and we wonder what drives a human being to willingly blow him or herself up to kill other people. How meaningless must their lives have become that they can give them up for a "cause" they will never be able to participate in! But we have never been there, at least most of us haven't.

In that respect, we share much in common with the "decadent" Romans who let foreign mercenaries do the empire's fighting and then couldn't understand why those mercenaries turned on their masters and let the barbarians in.

How many aspects of our national life will be turned over to the barbarians because we have poured so much of our wealth down the rathole of Iraq? Will we auction off our highways and our water treatment plants and our school buildings to the highest bidder, foreign or domestic, because we no longer have the funds to maintain them ourselves? We are an economy that makes too few of its citizens' needs: we simply shuttle others' products around and extract the excess value in the form of semi-worthless currency. Our steel mills, our automobile plants, our textile factories, all the places that manufactured our clothes, our furniture, our lamps and tires and dishes and books and televisions and shoes -- they're virtually all gone. We are an economy of slave-owners, physically unable to make anything for ourselves and relying on the willingness of others to do it for us.

What happens when they become unwilling? What happens when "they" band together to exact payment for our misadventure in Iraq?

Oh, we will pay, all right, all of us, but it will be the wealthy supporters of the booosh administration who pay the least, because they still have the power to escape their economic fate. And we the people, especially the people on the left, will have done too little, far too little, to prevent it.

We, too, have lost.


Tansy Gold

[Jim Warren]

5. Want to know what three words

would be more difficult for him to say?

I am poor.

[BeHereNow]

7. Recommended

Great post.
Thanks.
BHN

[Tansy_Gold]

10. Thank YOU

(and a shameless kick to my own post!) :evilgrin:

[CatWoman]

8. what? only 2 recs?

K&R

[Tansy_Gold]

9. Thanks

thanks, CatWoman, and BeHereNow.

I think there are probably a lot of folks here who aren't ready to face the ramifications of "We have lost." It's scary. It's frightening to think what will happen in/to an America that has to face up to this horrific mess.

Vietnam was bad, but even the administrations then knew that the ultimate result would not have be direct and immediate and catastrophic impact on the American economy and way of life. The American adventure in southeast Asia did not destroy the infrastructure there the way the American adventure in Iraq has; nor did it foment such international hatred against the U.S.

Worse, however, is the dependence that has developed within the U.S. The industrial giant that grew out of the crisis of WW2 deteriorated after Vietnam, and we are now an industrial weakling. As I walk through grocery store aisles filled with foodstuffs grown in and shipped from Australia, Mexico, Chile, I wonder if we could even feed ourselves should the rest of the world withhold its bounty? If oil prices rose, would our mechanized farms be able to produce sufficient grain to keep bread from rising to $10 a loaf? Would our trucking firms be able to transport beef from Colorado to Florida? Obviously, these are some extreme examples, but how great an impact would this have on our daily lives? Would most Americans -- and I'm not talking about the wise ones here on DU ;-) -- would most Americans be able to survive without giving up a sizeable portion of the luxuries that they take for granted? And if faced with the loss of that luxurious (by world standards) way of life, would they alter their lifestyle or surrender to violence?

I seriously think a lot of us are in something of a state of denial. We've watched the signs that suggest a major shift in the economy is just around the corner, but we haven't really prepared for the realities that may come with that shift. We've partied like it's 1999 all over again. We've made excuses. We've shopped and we've traded on the stock market and we've gambled with the environment -- and some of us are going to be in shock when the meteor hits us.

Will it come tomorrow? Hell, I don't know. I doubt it, but it might. It may not hit for another five or ten years, and the "youngsters" will have to pay the price. Or maybe the next generation, my grandkids.

But I do think that the lack of major response to my original post -- if I may be so arrogant as to put any validity in my own statements -- suggests there are a lot of people who just don't want to look into that particular future. I can't make them, you can't make them, no one can. But if the future smacks them in the face, well. . . . . .

Tansy Gold, pessimistic this cold grey day in Arizona