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And other, advanced cultural pursuits

by Scott McNutt

The invasion of Iraq was supposed to be the Bush II administration’s masterpiece of pre-emptive diplomacy, a thing of beauty executed upon a canvas of such vast scale that the world would tremble before its awesome majesty. It was to have been the inspiration for a Christian jihad, a Western crusade that would bring peace, democracy, stability, God, and McDonald’s to the Middle East. And secure the blessings therefrom for the American people. Also it would secure oil for America—just an unintended but unavoidable consequence of doing God’s work.

The logic and the course of the invasion were to have been this: America had the right to preemptively invade Iraq not because Saddam Hussein was threatening America, but because someday he just might. And he was evil, and America must fight evil, all the time, everywhere, to do God’s work. Besides, Ahmed Chalabi or somebody else who knew Iraq promised Paul Wolfowitz the Iraqi people were grateful, submissive Abdullahs, salivating at the prospect of throwing roses at foreign troops’ feet. Enormous caches of Weapons of Mass Destruction would be found buried under every rose bush (not the source of the roses cast before the liberating troops’ boots, though), because on March 30, 2003, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld assured us that “we know where they are.”

Major hostilities were supposed to have been over when President Bush insisted they were, on May 1, 2003, while standing under a banner emblazoned “Mission Accomplished.” The few pathetic malcontents harassing the liberators were to have been humiliated into halting their guerilla attacks on July 2, 2003, when President Bush manfully taunted them to “Bring them on.”

And then, probably on July 4, 2003, our work would be done, and we’d ride off into the sunset. The next day, with God on our side, we’d ride out of the sunrise and into Iran or North Korea or one of those evil places like that—you know, the kind of evil place where evil people think their evil thoughts, plot their evil schemes, drink their evil coffee while watching their evil daughters playing with their evil dollies, and just generally lead the evil equivalent of the good life—and we’d kick some more Asses of Evil. Yes, as Bush’s American dream team envisioned it, the conquest of Iraq was supposed to have been a representation from the Sistine Chapel, only in combat fatigues instead of fig leaves.

It’s come out more like Edward Munch’s “The Scream,” slightly more terrorized. Actually, that’s giving the Bush team too much credit. A kindergartner’s finger painting is better executed than has been Mr. Bush’s mucked-up piece of Middle East war.

A year later, on the eve of a provisional government’s ascension to power, Chalabi is disgraced, the guerilla attacks continue, and one old shell of sarin gas has been found, which not even the Bush team is audacious enough to claim as proof of the promised WMDs. That some war supporters do point to the shell as justification for the invasion is a sad testament to the blinding power of faith over reason—or to the blinding allure of Asses of Evil when heads of state are intent on sticking it to them, perhaps.

Meanwhile, American troops stay on and on in Iraq, most hunkered behind bunkers while a reprehensible few amuse themselves in the prisons, doing unto prisoners whatever their superiors did or did not authorize them to do. Of course, whatever authority may or may not have been bestowed upon them, what they’ve done unto others likely is not what they would have done unto themselves.

No, the hoped-for masterpiece never materialized, and the missionless mission continues, in violation of probably every admonition in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Certainly, the neo-con artists who broadbrushed American troops into this predicament should have paid heed to at least this passage from Sun Tzu: “The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.”

Admittedly, it would be too much to ask that George W. Bush should have read this, or any other passage from Sun Tzu’s famed manual of war; but couldn’t someone in his cabinet have at least read it to him? If only Papa Bush had presented to Junior a “paint-by-numbers” war starter kit...

June 24, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 26 © 2004 Metro Pulse