James Carroll - The Unwinnable War

[realFedUp]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/07/the_unwinnable_war/

The unwinnable war
By James Carroll | September 7, 2004

GEORGE W. BUSH finally told the truth. It happened last week when he said of the war on terrorism, "I don't think you can win it."
We know it was the truth because of the way it embarrassed him, because of the way his handlers immediately required him to repudiate it ("I probably need to be more articulate"), and because the mass of Republicans were deaf to it. Just as Bush had inadvertently spoken the exact truth about the war on terrorism at its onset ("This crusade, this war on terrorism"), he had inadvertently done so again.

Six months ago, I took a leave from this column. I had been writing obsessively about the war for more than two years, and my truth had become woefully repetitive. "Whatever happens from this week forward in Iraq," I wrote in March, "the main outcome of the war is clear. We have defeated ourselves."
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War is an abstraction in the American imagination. It lives there, cloaked in glory, as an emblem of patriotism. We show our love for our country by sending our troops abroad and then "supporting" them, no matter what. When images appear that contradict the high-flown rhetoric of war -- whether of young GIs disgracefully humiliating Iraqi prisoners or of a devastated holy city where vast fields of American-created rubble surround a shrine -- we simply do not take them in as real. Thinking of ourselves as only motivated by good intentions, we cannot fathom the possibility that we have demonized an innocent people, that what we are doing is murder on a vast scale.

The war, meanwhile, answers the Bush administration's need to justify an unprecedented repressiveness in the "homeland," and simultaneously prompts widespread docile submission to the new martial law. But more deeply still, by understanding ourselves as a people at war, we Americans find exemption from the duty to face the grotesque shame of what we are doing in the world.

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[ixion]

1. wow... very moving piece...I'm glad to hear this voiced in the mainstream

war as an abstraction is a dangerous concept.

And this notion of projecting 'evil' is not limited to Christians, but applies to most categories of religious zealot, whatever the brand may be.

[enough]

2. Some terrible truths here.

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We are killing people by the thousands who threaten absolutely nothing of ours.

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War is answering an American need that has nothing to do with the Iraqi people.

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But more deeply still, by understanding ourselves as a people at war, we Americans find exemption from the duty to face the grotesque shame of what we are doing in the world.

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[realFedUp]

3. Yes....we certainly haven't heard these spoken out loud...yet