Dinosaur in the Tar Pit

[Generic Other]

Excellent article proving Santayana's words: "Those who forget the lessons of the history are doomed to repeat them."

From Buzzflash:

July 8, 2003
How the Land of the Free Became the Dinosaur in the Tar Pit
by Maureen Farrell

"From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit -- we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on."-- Norman Schwarzkopf, from his 1993 autobiography, It Doesn't Take a Hero

"We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability." - George H.W. Bush, A World Transformed, 1998

Believing in the projected brevity and stated purpose of W.W.I, diehard imperialist Rudyard Kipling used his influence to secure a commission in the Irish Guards for his only son, Jack, who was both medically unfit and underage. Wounded in combat, Jack was listed missing in action and confirmed dead two years later. By that time, Kipling's grandiose notions about patriotism and valor were replaced by bitter self-recrimination. "If any ask us why we died; Tell them 'Because our fathers lied,' a haunted Kipling wrote.

By now, more and more Americans are coming to understand how deeply we were deceived as our sons die daily in the long, unforgiving shadow of WMD "exaggerations." Though some tried to warn us , the mainstream media sold the war so fiercely and thoroughly that these small voices had relatively little impact -- particularly when anyone attempting to expose uncomfortable truths was accused of "drinking Saddam Hussein's Kool-Aid."

http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/03/07/08.html