Eight Years (part one)

Mudville's eighth anniversary falls in a time period with lots of military anniversaries. One occurring this week - the 150th anniversary of the South firing on Ft Sumter, has (rightfully) gotten a lot of media coverage. Others, like the 70th anniversary of war in Libya passed mostly unnoticed.

The dreary scene at the Rats of Tobruk Memorial on Anzac Parade could not have been further removed from the searing heat and dust of the Libyan desert where 14,000 Australians, along with British, Indian, Czech and Polish forces, defied German and Italian attempts to take the vital port city of Tobruk during World War II.

Which category includes this event?

Eight years on:

On April 9, 2003, the statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square, directly in front of the Palestine Hotel where the world's journalists had been quartered, was toppled by a U.S. M88 armored recovery vehicle surrounded by dozens of celebrating Iraqis, who had been attempting to pull down the statue earlier with little success. One such futile attempt by sledgehammer wielding weightlifter Kadhem Sharif particularly caught media attention. Eventually the M88 was able to topple the statue which was jumped upon by Iraqi citizens who then decapitated the head of the statue and dragged it through the streets of the city hitting it with their shoes. The destruction of the statue was shown live on cable news networks as it happened and made the front pages of newspapers and covers of magazines all over the world - symbolizing the fall of the Hussein government. The images of the statue destruction provided a clear refutation of Information Minister Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf's reports that Iraq had been winning the war.

"Small crowd," I thought at the time. "Not a good sign." I'd started this blog less than a month before that statue fell, just a couple days before the ground invasion began.... hold that thought - imaginary phone call coming in. Hello caller, you're on.

"We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less."

Well, hello there Nancy Pelosi from 2003. Sure, I agree, we could have just dropped a smart bomb on it from 30,000 feet. But what did you mean by that?

Hmmm, she hung up. Maybe some day she'll control the budget, and we'll find out.

Anyhow, "Small crowd," I thought at the time. "Not a good sign." I didn't commit those words to this blog until a few weeks later - getting rid of Saddam was what it was all about, and people seemed so damned happy at the time, why spoil that with my gloomier thoughts?

Hang on - imaginary phone call, be right back. Hello?

I don't oppose all wars. After September 11, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again...

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda...

Well, hello obscure state senator from Illinois giving a speech in 2002 that no one would hear for several years which I'm certain was an accurate reflection of your thoughts but also a compilation of several talking points others had been saying for some time. You do know we'd been at war with Iraq since 1991 - mostly via an air campaign, which is why bin Laden's (he called it "the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance") 1998 call to jihad ("The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it...") was effective in the first place, right?

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people...

We'll never know what a united world could have achieved. But the UN could not agree on anything, the situation degenerated, and here we are. Status quo was not working. The French were too desperate for oil and trade at any cost. Well-intentioned Americans were led into the streets by Communists (and others) with an agenda. The media distorted the split. Many in America and abroad thought they could manipulate the situation to their personal gain. They miscalculated. The fire is lit.

I was on active duty - had been for longer than the 12 years mentioned above, so I was really hoping Saddam would leave Iraq before I had to go there, you know, "willingly take up arms myself," etc. You see, I was an actual "anti-war" guy. The people who ensured I would have to go really pissed me off back then. Honestly I suspected they were hypocrites whose positions would be different with a different US president...

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...

Yeah, okay. Sounds good, I'll play along. Let's pretend you're President of the United States. (Heh - this guy's middle name is "Hussein" - no way will he ever be President of the United States, right?) You're putting everything you've got into "finishing the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda" and "hunting down and rooting out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance." How do you handle Saddam Hussein, or any dictator who "butchers his own people to secure his own power" but "poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors?"

...in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

Okay, I guess if you ever get to be president we'll figure out exactly what you mean by that. You should give Nancy Pelosi a call...

I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war...

Wait, what? What's a rash war?

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war.

Okay, got it. At first when you said "rash war" I thought you meant a war we rushed into before anyone had the chance to debate it or even think about it, which is obviously not the case with Iraq. So when you're president we'll get bin Laden, give everyone health care, lower the poverty rate, end corporate scandals, boost the stock market, and not get into any rash, distracting wars. Got it. But just remember all that, because the public and the press will, and they'll hold you to it! I mean, you don't get to re-write history...

I don't oppose all wars. My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil.

Hey - small world. Patton's army liberated the POW camp where my uncle spent the last months of World War Two. See, we've got a connection!

Good stuff - glad to hear you know your Patton - so many folks only know George C Scott. But funny you should mention that... did you know Winston Churchill called World War Two "the unnecessary war"?

See, Churchill had been trying to get other nations to unite against Hitler back when he was still weak... hmmm, he hung up. (Before I could mention Afghanistan, even.)

Guess he's not a Churchill fan.

Well, maybe we'll hear more from him later. So anyhow, the statue fell, Saddam was gone from power, and everyone knew that getting rid of a dictator was what it was all about...

According to a May 1 Gallup poll for CNN and USA Today, 79 percent of Americans said the war with Iraq was justified even without conclusive evidence of the illegal weapons, while 19 percent said discoveries of the weapons were needed to justify the war. An April Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 72 percent supported the war even without a finding of chemical or biological weapons. Similarly, a CBS News poll found that 60 percent said the war was worth the blood and other costs even if weapons are never found.

So that was the end of the "Bush lied about WMD" line; if he had, no one cared. I... wait, another imaginary phone call. BRB...

(More to follow...)