Democracy and Occupation, and the Last Battle

The standard line is that the car bombs and the rest of the insurgency are directed toward preventing the establishment of democracy in Iraq. Why isn't it possible that the main reason is the reason the insurgents give: to end the occupation? We won't acknowledge that motive, though, because it would lay bare the obvious choice: defeat the insurgency, which we've proven we cannot do, or get out. Because we can't face that choice, we say that we're there to help Iraq form a democracy and train its own security forces. You tell me if state-building under these circumstances is something we want to pour our blood into.

Mark this prediction: historians will say that the Iraq war, not 9/11, was the turning point, the point where our decline began. Rather, the two events together form the pivotal point in the history of our leadership. September 11, that obscene attack, created conditions ideal for leadership: the whole world, except for our declared enemies, ready to follow us and work with us. With the Iraq war, we turned against the world, told the people ready to help us that we didn't want their help, that we would pursue an illegal war rather than the one they wanted to help us fight. Remember that Muslims too wanted to help us fight the war against radical Islam. Not any more.

We can't even recruit Americans to fight anymore. Would you have predicted, back in the fall of 2001, that we couldn't maintain an all volunteer force in 2005 because no one wanted to join? Do you remember the sense of patriotism and unity that existed during that fall? Everyone wanted to do what they could. Now the Iraq war has destroyed our unity, and a mother rightly says, "Why should I send my boys to die in Baghdad?" Who's going to join the army when the whole community says, "Don't do it"?

So our government can't lead the country any longer, and the country can't lead the world. By their fruits you shall know them. I know incompetence and dishonesty when I see it. What this administration is good at is making people think they know what they're doing. That's the purpose of propaganda: to deceive, distort, dissimulate and altogether degrade discourse the point where people who try to say the truth are squashed by the true believers. True believers are people who truly believe, not people who believe in the truth.

A long time ago, C. S. Lewis wrote a parable about evil in The Last Battle. An ape named Shift dressed up a donkey to look like Aslan, God's spirit on earth, and people believed him. He told the citizens of Narnia to give him power, to do all sorts of bad things, and when people asked him why, he replied, "Because Aslan says so." The people believed him. Only a civil war, the last battle, deposed Shift and his donkey.

Now ask if Karl Rove doesn't have the cleverness of Shift, and if George Bush doesn't look like a donkey to you. He comes in the name of God and he acts like a fucking donkey. I'm not making fun of his big ears here. I also have to say that he has political skills and shrewdness that far exceed the donkey's in The Last Battle. But in the end, he doesn't know what he's doing: he's a callow rich guy who never outgrew his prodigal past, who never acquired the jugdment necessary to lead a great nation. You can see the results: a nation destroyed, and a world at war with itself. When you think about 9/11, when you read about the latest car bomb in Baghdad, note the distance we've descended in the last three years. Remember you've only seen the beginning of this, the last battle.

How's that for an apocalyptic vision, those of you who believe we're in the end times?