Childs Play

II and I (that's three eyes mind you) had a rigorous discussion about our troops a while back. We both feel strongly we need to get the troops out of Iraq, however our ideas about doing so, differ. We are both strong critics of the supposed "War".

Here's the problem. Critics of Bush's Iraq war treat pro-war advocates as intellectual equals, or try to anyway. Then these critics are puzzled when factual discourse gives way to personal attacks. This is how a child fights. What critics ignore is that pro-war propaganda is simple and childishly deceptive for good reason. The Republican noise machine knows that its base doesn't know much about Middle East geopolitics, so if you mention Iraq and 9/11 together enough times they will assume that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. If you say we can't leave now because we're winning, they will believe that, too. Josef Goebbels once said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Bush's advisers count on ignorance; ignorance about the history of the Iraq conflicts, ignorance of the historical "Great Game," ignorance about Bush's hidden agenda for the Middle East, and ignorance about the NeoCon philosophy of hegemony and the "Noble Lie." Bush's public statements always refer to "our enemy" or "they," never defining who "they" are. For many pro-war propaganda consumers the logic is childishly simple: "they" attacked us first, so we get to attack them back. Few ever question why "they" decided to attack us in the first place. These war lovers couldn't grasp the truth. The Bush administration made its case for war against Iraq not with explicit reasoned arguments but with carefully crafted and deliberately vague rhetoric designed to trigger fear and hatred. This is why well-reasoned political discourse has given way to unsupported opinion and vitriolic name-calling. Dumbed-down Bush-hawks respond to simplistic emotional diatribes, not to logic or reason, and certainly not to hard facts. By using “support the troops” as a rhetorical mainstay, the militarist right is essentially hiding behind the soldiers to avoid a serious discussion of the real reasons for and goals of the Iraq war. It’s an act of moral cowardice, pure and simple.