Living a Lie

Honesty, the best medicine

Turn on the TV and what do you hear?

Our Executive staffers and Pentagon gurus look down their nose and claim in their condescendingly superior attitude a screed that sounds something like this: “It’s up to the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own country.”

Yes, that might be true if we didn’t have a hand in obliterating the country in the first place.

Georgie seems to be better at taking things apart then putting them together and this was in evidence over the last four years. In fact, he did it so well tht we will continue to pay the price for decades to come. But let’s remember, in these callous remarks, so easily tossed about, our leaders seem to want to psychologically o distance us from the problem. In the process, , they have rationalized what has happened and the rest of us are left holding on to all that is left, lies. It is all too reminiscent of the justifications that our politicians came up with to rationalize our flight from Vietnam that left more questions than answers.

Have we learned so little in nearly forty years?

If nothing else, we as Americans should want to s hold onto the high ground whether we like the results or not rather than get caught up in the administration’s lies. . Let’s a\t least maintain our integrity and keep fact separated from fiction.

The truth is very simple:

We went into Iraq with no provocation.

We destroyed their infrastructure with “shock and awe.”

We took apart their government leaving nothing…..

We dismantled the Sunnis management and authority infrastructure replacing it with promises that were never realized..

Through our actions, we were directly responsible for the breakdown in electrical service, the interruption of water supplies, the breakdown in transportation.

We made it impossible for families to walk the streets; to send their children to school; to even shop for food safely. Today, of the 3.5 million school age children,
Only 30% are still in school and teachers confess that with all the pressures on them,
The children have learned little. What’s more, a very high number of the children are demonstrating psychological scars from their experience.


But it doesn’t end there. There is more.
We failed to protect whatever infrastructure remained.

We allowed the banks to be robbed; the buildings to be pillaged.

We didn’t protect their heritage. The museums were sacked. Artwork stolen; ancient
Sculptures were either pirated away, broken or destroyed.

In four years, the contribution to the rebuilding of Iraq has been neglible.

Hundreds of thousands of innocents have been killed or seriously wounded.

Hundreds of thousands of the Middle Class have had to flee the country.

Nearly two million families have been dislocated.

We have contributed to the exacerbation of ancient feelings between Sunni and Shia’.

And the conditions on the streets are worse than ever.

Through all of this, we have the unmitigated gall to assert with a straight face that despite what we have done, it is the responsibility of the
Iraqi people to piece together their government ostensibly absolving themselves of any responsibility for what took place.

We may want to leave this country and with good reason. And it is not hard to argue with that assessment. It is a fundamentally a no-win situation that has bled us of near one half a trillion dollars!


But let’s at least be honest enough to state the truth.

After misappropriating hard-earned tax dollars seemingly without giving it a thought, George Bush and his leadership have managed to destroy a nation of 26 million people whose major crime was being part of a government ruled by a dictatorship.

Our Armed forces have done a magnificent job; only their leadership has let them down and the country down.

In any company on earth, if you fail your responsibility you are punished.

In this government, the obverse is true. If you fail, we promote you or sing your praises.

To solve the war of words, our “spinmeisters” work overtime to hide the truth: We invaded a country for no purpose to make it the democracy it didn’t want to become; we didn’t bother to learn their language, their customs, habits or traditions. And we are astounded that we failed.

There is no getting away from the truth.

If we want to skip out, that’s one thing. If we are ready to blame the Iraqi’s for what we did, that’s something else again.

Les Aaron