[Mb-civic] Train wreck of an election

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/art
icles/2005/02/01/train_wreck_of_an_election/
 
 
JAMES CARROLL
Train wreck of an election
By James Carroll  |  February 1, 2005

IN THINKING about the election in Iraq, my mind keeps 
jumping back to last week's train wreck in California. A 
deranged man, intending suicide, drove his Jeep Cherokee 
onto the railroad tracks, where it got stuck. The onrushing 
train drew near. The man suddenly left his vehicle and leapt 
out of the way. He watched as the train crashed into his SUV, 
derailed, jackknifed, and hit another train. Railroad cars 
crumbled. Eleven people were killed and nearly 200 were 
injured, some gravely. The deranged man was arrested. 
Whatever troubles had made him suicidal in the first place 
paled in comparison to the trouble he had now.

Iraq is a train wreck. The man who caused it is not in trouble. 
Tomorrow night he will give his State of the Union speech, 
and the Washington establishment will applaud him. Tens of 
thousands of Iraqis are dead. More than 1,400 Americans are 
dead. An Arab nation is humiliated. Islamic hatred of the West 
is ignited. The American military is emasculated. Lies define 
the foreign policy of the United States. On all sides of 
Operation Iraqi Freedom, there is wreckage. In the center, 
there are the dead, the maimed, the displaced -- those who will 
be the ghosts of this war for the rest of their days. All for 
what?

Tomorrow night, like a boy in a bubble, George W. Bush will 
tell the world it was for "freedom." He will claim the Iraqi 
election as a stamp of legitimacy for his policy, and many 
people will affirm it as such. Even critics of the war will mute 
their objections in response to the image of millions of Iraqis 
going to polling places, as if that act undoes the Bush 
catastrophe.

There is only one way in which the grand claims made by 
Washington for the weekend voting will be true -- and that is 
if the elections empower an Iraqi government that moves 
quickly to repudiate Washington. The only meaning 
"freedom" can have in Iraq right now is freedom from the US 
occupation, which is the ground of disorder. But such an 
outcome of the elections is not likely. The chaos of a 
destroyed society leaves every new instrument of governance 
dependent on the American force, even as the American force 
shows itself incapable of defending against, much less 
defeating, the suicide legions. The irony is exquisite. The 
worse the violence gets, the longer the Americans will claim 
the right to stay. In that way, the ever more emboldened -- and 
brutal -- "insurgents" do Bush's work for him by making it 
extremely difficult for an authentic Iraqi source of order to 
emerge. Likewise the elections, which, as universally 
predicted, have now ratified the country's deadly factionalism.

Full blown civil war, if it comes to that, will serve Bush's 
purpose, too. All the better if Syria and Iran leap into the fray. 
In such extremity, America's occupation of Iraq will be 
declared legitimate. America's city-smashing tactics, already 
displayed in Fallujah, will seem necessary. Further "regime 
change" will follow. America's ad hoc Middle East bases, 
meanwhile, will have become permanent. Iraq will have 
become America's client state in the world's great oil preserve. 
Bush's disastrous and immoral war policy will have 
"succeeded," even though no war will have been won. The 
region's war will be eternal, forever justifying America's 
presence. Bush's callow hubris will be celebrated as genius. 
Congress will give the military machine everything it needs to 
roll on to more "elections." These outcomes, of course, 
presume the ongoing deaths of tens of thousands more men, 
women, and children. And American soldiers.

Something else about that California train wreck strikes me. 
As news reports suggested, so many passengers were killed 
and injured because the locomotive was pushing the train 
from behind, which put the lightweight passenger coaches 
vulnerably in front. If, instead, the heavy, track-clearing 
locomotive had been leading and had hit the Jeep, it could 
have pushed the vehicle aside. The jack-knifing and 
derailment would not have occurred. The American war 
machine is like a train running in "push-mode," with the 
engineer safely back away from danger. In the train wreck of 
Iraq, it is passengers who have borne the brunt. The man with 
his hand on the throttle couldn't be more securely removed 
from the terrible consequences of his locomotion. Thus, Bush 
is like the man who caused the wreck, and like the man who 
was protected from it. Deranged. Detached. Alive and well in 
the bubble he calls "freedom," receiving applause.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. 
 


© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
  


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