Henri Reynard Speaks Out

An Unwinnable War, or an Imperial Soap Opera?

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A friend sent me a little poem in which he describes Saddam sitting in a hot tub smoking a cigar and getting high on Arabic hatred. It goes on to describe how it all comes down to suicide bombers in the end. It describes how we will probably retreat as we did in Lebanon with marines leaving with both mud and blood on their boots. It is certainly an accurate reflection of how Saddam intends to win an unwinnable war. He is possibly dead, or at least wounded severely at this point but we put too much stock in killing him in the beginning of this war. Even if we have accomplished that, his organization is alive and monstrous enough for us. My greatest fear is that this time we will not retreat, we will turn our power loose and blow the winds of war across the face of this planet.

The Arabic culture is bringing the people of Iraq back toward Baghdad instead of into refugee camps, not any love for Saddam. We so far have misread them totally, we think of them as Americans in Bhurkas, they are not, they are Palestinians in an oil-rich nation. Bush and his boyos may even be trying to do what they say they are trying to do, although I doubt it. But they don't get how implacable a foe they are creating. Or worse they get it and they just don't care, they want an American Empire at any cost. Or even they are just too damn scared of terrorism and don't know what else to do. It all comes down to the same thing, Arafat was always ready to die for his belief in his people, and they are ready to die for their belief in Islam and their hatred of Israel. Saddam is discredited maybe even dead. But even if he is dead he left behind a radicalized nation of people all of whom will hate us equally well, Sunni's, Shiites, Kurds, all. Of course there are only twenty-five million of them, even if we kill them all that will take only two hundred and fifty thousand of us to accomplish at the current ratios. The fanatics in the Bush White House think we can improve that ratio if we use nuclear weapons.

Yassir Arafat went from evil to Nobel candidate back to evil in our eyes but his Palestinian people never wavered in their intense hatred of Israel. Iraq is not going to win this war but neither are we. The hatred of the Arabic people will haunt us for a very long time. The people of the Arabic culture are much better at hating than we are. The thing that I worry about most is that we will learn to hate one half as well as they can. Or what would be far worse; to enjoy the power that we have to kill our opponents. We may have killed five thousand people thus far in this conflict; they have killed fifty-four of us as of yesterday. One hundred to one ratios are in keeping with what we did in the first Gulf war. Is it any wonder that suicide bombers are their chosen weapon? They change that ratio at least for any single event.

The other question asked by few in this war so far, how far does Shock and Awe take us toward using terror to win? Isn't war all about creating terror in the people who you hope will quit fighting you until they quit? In the seventeenth century enlightened men like Cromwell committed atrocities to get their enemies to surrender and mean it. After he died and his side had lost he was painted as the source of evil, There were no better human beings leading armies at that point in history. If war is our means to security we need to terrify our enemies. Imposing terror on them is the only way to make an enemy stop fighting us!

The reason that I hate war as a solution to our problems is that war makes monsters better than any other means of solving differences between people. This nation of relatively kind and gentle people can become a monster with enough willingness to use war as a means to maintaining security. We can certainly make monsters out of kind and gentle Arabic people by terrorizing them enough. That any one war will never deliver security for long is an accepted fact. If you read history and don't deny its lessons you will agree. The Richard Perles of this nation have big visions about how we should live our lives. They believe in imposing an American Empire on the whole world as a means of creating a Pax Americana, an American peace. They expect to be able to create a lasting peace based on a great American Empire willing to use force to impose its will on other nations. They are not Republicans they are now the party of empire and all of the hatred and anger that such a role in the world will bring down upon us will not deter them.

The Imperial party controls our government, our military and our media to a far greater degree than I believed possible before 9/11. The thing that they do not want debated at all cost is what this means to our democracy. Empires do not have free elections, or Presidents and Congresses, they have Emperors selected from a few powerful families. Only the powerful will have a voice in who is Emperor. The question is how far is it from our Julius Caesar to our Caliguia? The Roman Empire rotted away gradually until it finally fell, what is in store for the American Empire? I can hardly wait to find out.