Works In Progress - June 2003

I was at work on the evening of 19 March. At 6:50pm, my boss called to tell me that bombs and cruise missiles were falling on Baghdad, the war had begun. I was glad it was him and not Frank, my archconservative co-worker. I thanked my boss for telling mewe share interests and views on current eventsand I turned on the TV in my office. I still had to work a few more hours, but I wanted to catch as much "coverage" as I could before I went home. When I got there, there wasn't much news yet, so I called and spoke to a few friends. All of themlike mewere distraught at the prospect of another unprovoked, senseless war against a country posed no threat to us. We comforted each other, emphasizing the need to keep ourselves together by keeping in touch and doing creative thingsgardening, art, music, etc.

As the war unfolded, it seemed as if it wasn't quite going according to the administration's plan. Instead of following orders and accepting a $30 billion bribe, Turkey not only refused overflight rights but actually put troops into northern Iraq, in Kurdish areas. The administration's eyes narrowed: even though the Kurds were helping US commando units, Kurdish autonomy was not a policy option, whatever ideas they might get. Like Syria, Iraq and Iran, Turkey doesn't want an independent Kurdistan to happen. Neither does the administration, but Turkish troops fighting Kurds would be an unpleasant distraction. The 173rd Airborne Brigade dropped into northern Iraq to remind everyone who's boss. At the same time, US forces attacking west from Kuwait were meeting unexpected resistance from Iraqis. Led by Fox News, howls of outrage and indignation came through the war fever: "The Iraqis are shooting back? At US? How DARE they defend their own country! They act as if they're being invaded, not liberated!"

In reports from the front, the troops were baffled, too. I can understand why: they were being told they'd be welcomed with flowers and then trained for heavy fighting, including possible use of chemical weapons.

As the war went on to its inevitable conclusion, I and many others became very disturbed by the attitude we saw developing here on the home front. Whipped up by the administration and the enthusiastic media, war fever escalated into jingoistic delirium.

If you even questioned the administration's "policy" you ran a high risk of being called "un-American". If you actually had the guts to oppose the war, people talked to you as if you were a traitor. Peace activists were vilified and dismissed as acting like children. I found the irony supreme: supposedly, the US was fighting for "freedom" in Iraq, yet all these "patriotic" Americans couldn't tolerate the right of others to dissent and peaceably assemble. When you pointed out that the Founders and others actually encouraged the people to question and to dissent Government policies, you got a blank look of angry frustration before this response: "Damn it, why can't you just support our troops?"

Well, we do support our troops. So much so that we don't want them risking their lives for Halliburton, Bechtel and Big Oil in senseless, unprovoked warsespecially at a time when the administration exploits them for political gain and then slashes the funding for the veterans' benefits they'll need when they get back home.

But delirium doesn't respond to reason, and this war delirium is even scarier than most. To question Bush and his administration often evokes a deep, visceral rage. Shortly after the war began, a few people were badly beaten by fellow audience members at a hockey game because they wouldn't stand up when country singer Lee Greenwood's "I'm Proud to be an American" was played over the loudspeaker. Never mind that Greenwood's song is just another ballad, not even the national anthem. When the Dixie Chicksa country group from Texasopposed the war, people bought their CDs and then stomped them to bits. When Frank, my conservative co-worker, saw the parody "WANTED" poster of Bush ("Nuclear-armed and extremely dangerous") on our restroom wall, he went apopleptic with fury, ripping it down and calling me a "subversive".

The next day, after he'd calmed down, I asked Frank why this reaction occurs. He said, "It's because people are fed up with the immorality of the past several years." In other words, they still haven't gotten over Bill Clinton yet. Eight years of peace and prosperity, with a little consensual nookie thrown in, is apparently "immoral" but unprovoked acts of aggression against weaker nations aren't.

Two days before the war began, in his nationally televised speech, Bush told us why we fight. After citing torture, rape and other brutalities by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Bush claimed that "intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." So not only were we going to war for the old reason"freedom"but to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Only the un-American would stop to consider that John Ashcroft poses a bigger threat to our freedom than Saddam Hussein ever did.

Despite the rhetoric, the WMD rationale is getting hollower by the day. Before the war, Secretary of State Powell looked like a damned fool when he insisted to the UN Security Council that Iraq's WMD exist, but he couldn't prove it. Unlike Kennedy during the 1962 missile crisis, Powell had no evidenceonly pictures of trucks and buildings that "could" be used to handle WMD. When pressed, Powell reverted to the administration's excuses: The proof DOES exist, but it's so secret that we can't show it to you, because that might reveal how we got it. The administration wouldn't even tell Hans Blix and his teams where to look, for the same "reason." Well, Mr. President, don't worry: the whole world knows the U.S. uses spy satellites, spy planes, spy computers and spy people. The world also knows that if you'd told Blix where to look, your little war might have been prevented.

Still, if WMD was the reason for war and the administration so certain of their existence, one would think that we would have them by now. As May fades into June, with "major operations in Iraq concluded," one may wonder why we don't. Indeed, those of us with "un-American" thoughts might be wondering why commando units didn't parachute out of the night skies over Iraq, right onto the places where the WMD are (since we claim to know), capture them and show them to the world in triumph. Days pass, and still no WMD are found; it is profoundly ironic that the mighty US is doing no better than the UN inspectors it derided. On 12 May, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Reuters that "it was a sophisticated deception program, and it will take some time to unravel that, but we will."

Hmmm. One might say the same of Bush's war.

In Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer IIIan alum of the Reagan State Departmentis the new civil administrator.

In Afghan fields, where poppies grow, US forces continue the war on terror.

In Washington DC, nine Democrats quibble among themselves instead of taking the political fight to Bush.

And in Thurston County, school districts stretch every nickel in a community where PUD's are created to fund a privately-owned conference centerwhich will operate at a losswith public money.