The Empire 123

De New York Times:

'Another Thousand Lives.

How long can this go on?

Saddam is dead. The weapons of mass destruction were a
mirage. More than 3,000 American G.I.s and scores of
thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Voters in the
United States have made it clear that they no longer
support American involvement in this exercise in
sustained barbarism. Incredibly, the U.S. military
itself is turning against the war.

And yet the president, against the counsel of his
commanders on the ground, apparently is ready to
escalate - to send more American lives into the fire he
set in Iraq.

In a devastating critique of the war, the newsweekly
Army Times led its current edition with the headline: 'About-Face on the War - After 3 years of support, troops sour on Iraq.' The article detailed a Military Times Poll that found, for the first time, that 'more troops disapprove of the president's handling of the war than approve of it.'

Only a third of the service members surveyed approved
of the president's conduct of the war, while 42 percent disapproved. Perhaps worse was the finding that only half of the troops believed that success in Iraq was likely.

The service members made it clear that they were not
attacking their commander in chief personally. His
overall approval rating remained high. What has turned
them off has been the wretched reality of the war. In
the article, David Segal, director of the Center for
Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, said, 'They're seeing more casualties and fatalities and less progress.'

In other words, they're seeing the same thing everybody
else is seeing - except, perhaps, Mr. Bush.

On New Year's Day, readers of The New York Times could
see the excruciating photo layout of the latest 1,000
American service members to die in Iraq. As in all
wars, most of them were young. Many of them were
smiling in the photos. All of them died unnecessarily.

The war has been an exercise in futility and mind-
boggling incompetence, and yet our involvement
continues - with no end in sight, no plans for
withdrawal, no idea of where we might be headed - as if
the U.S. had fallen into some kind of bizarrely
destructive trance from which it is unable to awaken.'

Lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0104-27.htm

Ook de Nederlandse regering steunt deze - in de woorden van de New York Times - 'exercise in sustained barbarism.' Misschien kan ook de Nederlandse parlementaire pers wakker worden en deze regering en de op handen zijnde coalitie enkele kritische vragen hierover stellen. Voordat het straks te laat is. Ik begrijp steeds meer hoe die lafheid van de Europese politiek en massamedia in de jaren dertig een rol van belang speelde bij de opkomst van het terroristische naziregime.