David Podvin: Eternal Nightmare

ETERNAL NIGHTMARE

By David Podvin

When Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez commanded the American troops in Iraq he passionately insisted that the United States was winning. Now that Sanchez has retired he describes our nation's occupation of Iraq as being “a nightmare with no end in sight.” This statement not only reverses Sanchez' pronouncements made while in uniform, it also contradicts the optimistic congressional testimony of current commander General David Petraeus... who apparently really did betray us. Sanchez says it was his duty to obey orders and not dissent publicly when he was on active duty, but that in retirement he feels obliged to speak the truth. By acknowledging candor is incompatible with military service the former officer has mocked the Senate resolution that condemns questioning the integrity of warriors. According to the prevailing wisdom, Sanchez must be regarded as a traitor.

He is not alone. Everyone who tells the truth about the Iraq War is deemed to be a traitor, just as everyone who lies about the Iraq War is exalted as a patriot. Modern America is reality inverted, a fabulist's Wonderland that transcends the wildest imagination of Lewis Carroll. Once, the United States destroyed Vietnamese villages in order to save them. Now, we are winning a glorious victory in Iraq by getting our asses kicked. Surrealism is a wonderful artistic device, but it is even more effective as a governing tool. The American people have become so disoriented by ambient fantasy that they are subsidizing the war as they oppose it. Yet when the fairy tales are cast aside, it becomes clear that America is losing in Iraq and will continue to lose in Iraq because there is nothing to win in Iraq.

Except for oil. The price of crude oil reached a new high on Friday, so the estimated Iraqi petroleum reserves are now worth eighteen trillion dollars. It should not be hard to believe that people will lie when so much money is at stake, especially when you consider that most people are willing to lie for free. But when the mammon is vast the lies become correspondingly enormous, with presidents and generals and senators and journalists all brazenly insisting that truth is fiction and vice versa.

It is not conspiracy... it is self-interest. In American politics those who lie on behalf of Big Business prosper, which explains why Democrats campaign by opposing the war but govern by supporting the war. Our system functions on the principle that you can fool most of the people most of the time, and that when you fool them to benefit the wealthy you share in the spoils…