More than 10 years after the declaration of the War on Terror, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan have killed at least 225,000 people, including men and women in uniform, contractors and civilians.
The wars will cost Americans between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans, according to a report by the Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.
Although the loss of lives and money has been significant, there have been other, often overlooked, casualties of this nation’s foreign escapades.
The casualty of debate and discourse
On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Nation Institute fellow Jeremy Scahill explained to MSNBC’s Martin Bashir the fallout of the conflict, including $800 billion wasted and 4,475 U.S. personnel and more than 100,000 Iraqis killed.
“I don’t see this as the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War,” Scahill said. “This was a war that started in 1991 and was waged consistently by the United States, and it was a bipartisan war.”
Then during the lead-up to the war, key members of the current administration, notably former senators Joe Biden and John Kerry, failed to debate its rationale and question unfounded claims of weapons of mass destruction.
During the years following the beginning of the war in Iraq, many Democrats have indulged in a bit of revisionist history. Even vice president (then senator and head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) Joe Biden, wasn’t immune from the war hysteria. On floor of the Senate, Oct. 10, 2002, he had this to say: “Saddam is dangerous. The world would be a better place without him. But the reason he poses a growing danger to the United States and its allies is that he possesses chemical and biological weapons and is seeking, with his $2 billion a year illegally skimmed from the U.N. fund for food, his Oil for Food program, for peace program, that he is seeking nuclear weapons.”
Members of Congress were warned by scores of scholars on the Middle East, Middle Eastern political leaders, former State Department and intelligence officials, who understood that a U.S. military campaign would likely result in a bloody uprising, a spike in extremism and terrorism, as well as increased sectarian and ethnic conflict.
There were many activists at the time in communication with Congressional offices, and often with individual members of Congress themselves, in the months leading up to the vote warning of the likely consequences of an invasion and occupation. In other words, Iraq was not only an unavoidable tragedy, but one that was foretold.
So, the ensuing claims by key congressional Democrats (at the time) and other leading Democratic supporters of the war that they weren’t made aware of the likely consequences of the invasion are not based in fact.
While there may not have been a sufficient level of debate going on within the halls of Congress, there was a pulsating and enthusiastic opposition against the war across the globe. From Wikipedia: Significant opposition to the Iraq War occurred worldwide, both before and during the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, United Kingdom, and smaller contingents from other nations, and throughout the subsequent occupation. People and groups opposing the war included the governments of many nations which did not take part in the invasion, and significant sections of the populace in those that did.
Poll results available from Gallup International, as well as local sources for most of Europe (West and East) showed that support for a war carried out “unilaterally by America and its allies” did not rise above 11 percent in a single country.
Yet, this discourse was ignored; this debate fell upon deaf ears. Millions of voices for peace could not break through the war chants of Washington, D.C.
Casualty of reason and truth
In war, truth is the first casualty — Aeschylus
To be sure, alternate realities and universes have always been a hallmark of American politics, but the selling of the Iraq war, in the face of all the contrary evidence and voices of opposition, was a wonder to behold.
David Corn of Mother Jones noted that the neoconservative cabal surrounding the Bush administration had ignored al-Qaeda because they were consumed with Iraq, and 9/11 presented them with what they believed was the perfect justification to invade Iraq:
“The neocons and others were focused on Iraq because they thought they could get a foothold there,” he said. “You can’t take out Iran, but you might take out Iraq. It was breakable. It was do-able. It was hittable. You can’t do the same operation against Iran. They needed a target, and it seemed the easiest target at the time.”
The fourth estate was complicit in this assassination of truth and reason and essentially operated as a servant, not of the people, but of the state. Although during a White House press conference two weeks before going to war with Iraq, Bush would invoke 9/11 and al-Qaeda to justify this preemptive attack, not a single member of the press would challenge that dishonest link and assertion.
And voices that did challenge the Bush administration’s particular construction of reality were either roundly attacked or quickly silenced.
For example, according to the Washington Post in 2007, “Phil Donahue’s nightly MSNBC talk show was virtually the only program of its type that gave antiwar voices a chance to be heard. Donahue was canceled 22 days before the invasion of Iraq.”
The reason was supposedly low ratings, but AllTV.com intercepted an in-house memo in which a network executive complained: “Donahue represents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time, our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”
MSNBC, presently the liberal lion of cable news, would like to whitewash their role in cheering the Iraq conflict on, but the historical record is clear. Chris Matthews, also of MSNBC, claimed that he was against the war from the beginning and yet that is out of sync with reality.
When Bush delivered a nationally televised speech from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, the infamous Mission Accomplished banner speech, Matthews was, at that time, worshipping in the temple of the converted:
“He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics … He looks for real. … [H]e didn’t fight in a war, but he looks like he does. … We’re proud of our president … Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president.”
This is what we are expected to forget about; these are the thoughts and words we are supposed to erase from our collective memories. This slaughter of reason and appropriate rationale was near total; it was almost complete from every corner of the media.
The untold legacy of the Bush administration is in fact the attack on reason and facts that is so prevalent today. It appears their resolve to repeat a lie was stronger than that of a media who couldn’t get around to discovering the truth.
It can be argued that because of this dereliction of duty by the press, it gave birtherism, Breitbartism and the various conspiracy theories, which would have been laughed into oblivion, a foothold (some would say stranglehold) in our nation’s social and political discourse.
Conclusion
Justice is turned back and righteousness stands far away. Truth has fallen in the street, and honesty can’t come in — Isaiah
The are many things to mourn and regret regarding our excursion into Iraq, the displaced, decimated and deceased Iraqis; the wounded and war-dead of this country and the money that could have been spent creating jobs, rebuilding a crumbling infrastructure and educating our nation’s children, gone down the rabbit hole of delusion.
But let us never forget where and how it all began. The displacements and plundering of treasure could not have happened without the complicity and cowardly actions of many of those in Congress; the deaths that happened as a result of the invasion and occupation could not have taken place without the pound of flesh that was first gutted from the truth.