[Mb-civic] Tell Them, 'Because our Fathers Lied'

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Published on Thursday, January 27, 2005 by CommonDreams.org 
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0127-26.htm
Tell Them, 'Because our Fathers 
Lied' 
by Gilbert Jordan 
"The master class has always declared the wars;
the subject class has always fought the battles...." 
- Eugene Debs 
Almost two years after our invasion of Iraq - an occasion that was to 
be 'a piece of cake,' one that would be celebrated by Iraqis strewing 
flowers before our troops - it is well past the point when we should 
recognize that the Iraq War has become the Vietnam of the 21st 
Century. As in Vietnam, The Mexican War, the Spanish American 
War, the pretext for going to war was manufactured by 
misrepresenting facts and whipping up public fury, usually a simple 
task when that well known toxin - patriotism - is in the air. 
Many years ago Rudyard Kipling wrote in his Epitaphs of the War: 
    'If any question why we died,
    Tell them, because our fathers lied.' 
At the same time, one of England's most promising poets of WWI, 
Wilfred Owen, wrote a famous anti-war poem. After presenting a 
series of ghastly images relating to the death of a soldier by mustard 
gas, Owen tells us that if we could witness such scenes, then 
    'My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children 
    ardent for some desperate glory. The old lie: Dulce et 
    decorum est Pro Patria Mori.'
For those of us without an Oxford education, the translation of the 
Latin is, "It is sweet and fitting that you should die for your country." 
President Bush and his minions are not unique in riding to war on 
the back of lies. Presidents Polk, McKinley, and Johnson, among 
others, were equally guilty. In each case, these presidents 
embarked on wars that were based not on self-defense but naked 
aggression and a desire to expropriate what belonged rightfully to 
others. To mask such pillaging, it is always accompanied by an 
appeal to nationalism and soaring flights of rhetoric. With Iraq, 
President Bush kept inventing new rationales for the invasion, all of 
them evoking some noble purpose. And in his second inaugural 
speech just delivered, more of the same was dished up supposedly 
in the service of liberty and justice for all of the world's citizens. Of 
this tactic, columnist Molly Ivins would say, "It's like putting lipstick 
on a pig." 
While the President can endlessly resort to Pollyanna summaries of 
the "catastrophic success" of our engagement in Iraq, the truth puts 
the lie to all of these fictions. 
On our side, there have been 1,417 Americans killed in this 
debacle, with thousands more grievously wounded, many of those 
facing severely diminished lives from this time on. The cost of the 
war, according to the ticking meter on the internet, is $152 billion 
dollars, with another $80 billion requested for the immediate future. 
Since there is no end to the war in sight, there will be no end of the 
hemorrhaging treasure to support it. And all of this coincides with 
staggering budget and trade deficits, a disappearing middle class as 
jobs are exported to other countries, growing poverty, and a flow of 
world investment to the Euro as more and more creditors lose 
confidence in the American dollar. Add to that the insidious erosion 
of liberties under the Patriot Act. But most distressing is our 
apparent willingness at the highest levels of government to condone 
torture as a means of gaining intelligence. With such a departure 
from international norms, it is not difficult to see that in fighting our 
"barbaric" enemies, we become more like them with every passing 
week. 
On the other side - yes, there is another side, although from 
coverage in American media, you would scarcely realize it - it is 
estimated that 100,000 Iraqis have been killed and far more than 
that made homeless, jobless, and futureless. Two years after 
'Mission Accomplished' the country has descended into 
unspeakable chaos. In Baghdad, electricity is available only part of 
the day, clean water is scarce, sewage floods the streets. Fallujah 
has been reduced to rubble, turning about 100,000 civilians into 
refugees. The coming election will be meaningless, since violence 
has forced candidates to remain anonymous, and the act of voting 
itself is the equivalent of playing Russian Roulette. An assured 
electoral victory by the Shiite majority is an invitation to civil war, 
which will make the current misery in that hapless country seem 
pale by comparison. All the happy talk by the Bush administration 
does not change these facts. The Washington wrecking crew has 
created its own tsunami and all of us (Americans and Iraqis) are 
paying the price of their imperial ambitions. 
In Dwight Eisenhower's final speech to the nation in 1953, he 
warned us of the power of the military-industrial complex: 
    'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every 
    rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those 
    who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not 
    clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It 
    is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its 
    scientists, the hopes of its children....This is not a way of life 
    at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, 
    it is humanity hanging from an iron cross.' 
We, with our deluded belief that God is on our side and that our new 
manifest destiny is to control the world and all its assets, must 
reassess our priorities. Is this ill-fated adventure in Iraq (with hints of 
Iran to follow) worth the agony it is causing? Do we really want to 
bankrupt the nation and sacrifice our youth by pouring our resources 
into wars of folly? Do we really want to leave the rest of the world 
shaking their heads as they see this country diminishing itself by 
paying lip service to its Constitution and Bill of Rights but, at the 
same time, violating the very essence of those documents? It is 
time for us to awake from a long sleep, take a serious look at the 
world and this country's place in it, and recognize that we have been 
manipulated by an unscrupulous band of miscreants who have been 
following their own agenda. And that agenda has nothing to do with 
democracy and liberty, at least for all of us living below the tiny sliver 
of privileged and tax-free aristocrats occupying the top of society's 
pyramid. 
A good place to start our examination is to recognize that Kipling 
and Owen pulled back the curtain from myths and lies that promote 
wars. In a real democracy, we should demand transparent 
government and accountability. Until we do, we are in danger of 
sacrificing our 225 year old experiment in self-rule. There is a very 
thin line between democracy and despotism and at the moment we 
are standing on the razor's edge. 
Gilbert Jordan is a retired English Professor from Monroe 
Community college, Rochester, NY and has been active in the anti-
war movement. He resides in in Wyoming, NY. Gilbert can be 
reached at gfjordan at frontiernet.net. 
                                 ###

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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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