Just Do What You Think You Should Do

by Christopher Cooper

Where have we been, these slow, cold, better-forgotten weeks of January and February? What have I asked you to think about, while spring has been still too far future to more than dream of? I see I have been able twice now to explore some avenue of our common condition without recourse to flogging our poor president, his keepers, or his Congressional and corporate enablers who have so ably and consistently (with the acquiescence of a sleeping populace) made possible our enduring Mideast misadventures. Molly Ivins wrote a few weeks ago that she would devote every subsequent column to the subject of the Iraq war. Then she died. You can say “God needed another angel” (she wouldn't have said so). You can wonder why the Reaper would cut down a clever, decent person and let Dick Cheney's blackened, pulpy heart continue to pump his acidic, corrupt blood, but Death makes such choices daily. But here it is, four in the morning Tuesday. At five the overnight drone of classical music will give way to the morning news, and a BBC announcer will tell us how many American soldiers have been sent to Paradise by what assortment of rockets and hand-made bombs, and how many score or hundreds of Iraqi citizens in which marketplaces were dismembered by exploding automobiles yesterday. If another ten-million-dollar helicopter rotored into the dust, we'll learn that “American officials” or “a Pentagon spokesperson” blames “mechanical difficulties.” In a day or a week the “insurgent video” will surface and the latest crash and casualties will be added to the toll of those shot down by “enemy missiles.” And so it goes, and so we don't have much choice. I must write and you may read or turn away. And Molly Ivins is dead forever, and Dick Cheney is imbued with eternal life, in exchange for giving over his soul to Satan, and George Bush stumbles on, oblivious. At least no young man or woman in America today need draw unemployment; the recruitment offices are open; The Surge is on! Ah, but Congress has stirred, you say. The whole of last week was given over to debate in the House of Representatives. Each man or woman who wished to speak was allotted a full five minutes to make whatever argument could be concluded in that space. Some were eloquent; some could barely manage a coherent sentence. At least the issue was, finally, fully four years into the folly, on the table. But to what end? Friday the resolution passed: Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), that: (1)Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and (2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq. Well, the Democrats are mostly right about the war—conceived in a fog of national self-pity and a spirit of retribution; engendered in layers of lies; promoted through a combination of false patriotism, house-pet journalism, wishful-thinking and Congressional abdication of responsibility; it has finally settled like a cold, greasy, inedible meal that our waiter refuses to remove from the table. Dick Cheney sneers that we “don't have the stomach” for it. But the Republicans are right about the resolution: too little, too late, no teeth. Do I want my congressman standing forthrightly and proudly for a non-binding resolution? I do not. Not on this or on any subject. It's a waste of his time and my money. I can send the president a non-binding resolution. Or I can write a letter to my editor. Or I can, as my father used to advise me in my teenage time, “go pound sand.” A month before this resolution passed, Dick Cheney pronounced its value: “It won't stop us.” The Veep further characterized the notion that President Bush may have lost credibility before the public because of the war, “hogwash.” And he reiterated that “we need to get the job done.” Just what “the job” might be is anybody's guess. We don't have old Saddam to kick around any more; we tore down his statue and all but tore off his head, and we've set up our military brass in his old palaces. We've plastered Iraq with dollar bills air-freighted in by the pallet. A government of our choosing is in place. We've engendered an “insurgency” that overlaps a civil war that bleeds into “sectarian violence” that mostly kills and cripples civilians and the odd American soldier or marine or mercenary. And don't forget, says President Bush, we're fighting “The Long War.” Some job. Some mess. And Congress let it happen. Made it happen. Voted for it. Now the House has sort of voted against it. Against the idea of it or its enlargement; possibly against its continuation for too much longer, although the resolution proposes no end. And the money pump is still thumping away in the cellar while our voices in Washington wrestle with a meaningless suggestion. And even that weak recommendation (they “disapprove” only of sending 21,500 more troops) is supported on a soggy mattress of “support” for the troops “who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq.” That is, part one, patriotic boilerplate with which likely no American disagrees, allows cover for the timid souls who otherwise would not dare cast a yes vote on part two. Helluva spine, ladies and gents. So the vote goes down and the surge goes on. But, by God, a majority of the House of Representatives disapproves! That's showin' 'em. And Hillary Clinton can't even bring herself to say her vote to authorize the war was a mistake, or that she's sorry for having cast it. In fact, she says, if you care so much about the origins of this war, about her part in its promulgation, go vote for somebody else. Vote for a liberal, why don't you? This war is wrong. It was wrong from the start. But now the war fever has burned itself out among the populace. Where eighty per cent of us once favored attacking Iraq, this week fifty-three per cent think we should bring the troops home. Sixty-seven per cent feel the war “is not going well.” One wonders, if the other thirty-three percent do think it's going well, just what they'd think a turn for the worse might look like. Eighty per cent of Iraqis want us to go home. Now. Three thousand and more of our soldiers are dead. When we finally do leave (and we all know we will), when the Sunnis and Shiites have killed enough of each other that they lose their taste for it or there are not enough left to bother killing, when the current bloodbath we're enjoying and the post-withdrawal bloodbath the war hawks are predicting have run their course, when this meaningless resolution shall have passed into the archives of wasted effort and the faded files of missed opportunities to do the right thing, something close to a million Iraqis will have been killed, mostly non-combatants. But we got rid of Saddam. We gave them Democracy. The most offensive argument, voiced by several Republican representatives last week, for “staying the course” or “getting the job done” is that to not do so will mean our 3,144 dead will have died in vain. Since no one has yet put forth a reasonable picture of what “job” we hope to finish or what “victory” would look like, the logical result of a policy of continuing the war must be that somehow more dead will make the already dead more content to have been killed, their spouses and parents and children's anguish eased in the sure and certain knowledge that the toll will continue to climb. A non binding resolution does nothing, but with adequate qualifiers about its support for the troops it will not in any way help, it can pass. Probably a real vote, on a bill that could stop this stupid, immoral, illegal war in short order, would fail. The effect on the course of the war is the same—none. So, if you truly do think the war is wrong, as most Democrats and a majority of Americans do, which vote would mean more to your conscience, your dignity, and to those troops, those pawns, those victims of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld you profess (in part one of your lame resolution) to “support?” Shut off the money. Pull the plug. Bring our men and women home. Let no other mother's son or daughter be blown to bits, reduced to a box of guts shipped home in secret and buried without witness by your president who says, “I'm sleeping a lot better than most people would assume.” Stand up and be an adult. Stop hiding; stop playing games; stop playing politics with death and misery; forget your Presidential campaigns current, pending or dreamed-of; dispel fears that your value as a future lobbyist may be diminished by a vote of conscience. If you think this war is worth fighting, go fight it. Or send your boy or girl. You're already contributing your money. If you think it's a waste and a crime and a folly, say that too. And put something on the line, like our soldiers do—something more than a yellow ribbon or a meaningless aphorism or a hollow vote. Don't let your senator or representative buy your tolerance with a five minute rendition of his or her opinion on a vote that does nothing more than waste the electrons that light the lamp of yes or no on the tally board of non-binding resolutions. It's ten after seven, and I'm done. I'll feed the dogs and go to work. My customers won't pay me for my “disapproval” of their decrepit house; they'll pay me only if I fix it. Mr. Cooper, a small-time contractor in a small town in a cold and distant state, is good at his job and tries to give his customers good work at a fair price. If he could get like service from his representatives, he would feel compelled to write fewer unpleasant complaints such as this. His hard drive failed and he has probably lost your address, but you may contact him at ckc2@prexar.com. Discuss This Article click here... ###