Somebody – I don’t quite remember who – opined recently that irony might still be with us, albeit just barely. Well, I’m here to tell you that rumors of its demise have not been greatly exaggerated. I’m referring of course to Rumsfeld’s Asia trip. Yes, the “Omega Man” of the Bush administration visited the region with which he is truly obsessed – more so, I’ll wager, than with the middle east. Recall that prior to the 9/11 attacks, there was that somewhat exciting stand-off with China over one of our spy planes, covered with typical disdain right here in Notes. Rumsfeld is a poster child for that faction of the Republican party that still has the 1954 map of Red China tacked up on its situation room wall; the folks that fueled the Wen Ho Lee spy controversy during the Clinton administration, which resulted in a bogus trial-by-media of Lee, incarceration, and subsequent retraction of the most serious allegations. (I forget which genius it was, but one Congressional Republican was so worked up in a lather about the Chinese menace that he fulminated over Clinton state department nominee Bill Lan Lee for some time without realizing he had the wrong Chinese guy.  

While in Singapore, Rumsfeld made some ludicrous statement about China’s military spending, which I believe comes in at around $35 billion U.S. per annum. Last I looked, that’s about eight percent of what we spend annually, if you leave out the intelligence budget and various extras. It should surprise no one that China is spending more on defense than it used to – this is a quite predictable response to our massive increases in military expenditure, particularly our stated intention to deploy “missile defense” (which, in truth, amounts to an offensive capability) along the Pacific rim. There is also a little thing called the Bush doctrine, which incorporates “preventive” (i.e. unprovoked) war and the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons. This has got Russia spending more on its military capabilities as well, which provides yet another stimulus for the Chinese, provoking India and Pakistan to follow suit. You can’t really call this an arms race, since we’re so far in the lead… but it’s something similar. 

As remarkable as this East Asia performance may have been, never has irony been so sorely missed as in the wake of Zarqawi’s death. There was Rumsfeld at the podium, earnestly commenting on how, in all the world, no man had been responsible for the deaths of more innocent civilians than the late Jordanian jihadist. I could only ask myself, how many people watching this are thinking the same thing I’m thinking? That, in terms of lives extinguished, no jihadist on Earth holds a candle to the rap sheet of mssrs. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and partners. That’s another league entirely. A member of Rumsfeld’s press entourage described the defense secretary’s mood on the plane as ebullient and optimistic about the future of the Iraq enterprise. No surprise there – visions of sweets and flowers still dancing in his tiny head. Back in the real world, it seems to me this execution will have two effects on the insurgency. For the foreign jihadists, it will provide a new martyr – a rank far higher than that of regional commander, to be sure. And for the vast majority (85%-90%) that comprise the native Iraqi resistance, it removes what can only be described as a major obstacle to their success – a mad dog bent on killing civilians, one they themselves would ultimately have had to put down. 

So someone has something to cheer about today. The question is, who?

The story of Haditha is finally emerging in its ghastly entirety, just the kind of tale this sort of conflict inevitably produces. A war of hostile occupation, fueled by a generalized distaste and even hatred of the people being occupied; a war with no discernible strategy or end point, in which soldiers are sent on patrol after pointless deadly patrol until their hopelessness and anger tears them apart from within. This is a brutal act, but it’s enormously easy for someone like me to sit safe at home and moralize — if I were there on patrol, I don’t know what the fuck I’d be doing, and let’s face it, neither would you. We are all responsible for this crime, because we have been unwilling to restrain our government from committing the larger crime of invading Iraq and compounding that crime with the evils that have proceeded from the occupation. I say “unwilling” because we are free to make our voices heard. If we demanded an end to this war, it would be over. 

One of our biggest problems as a society, in my opinion, is that we let ourselves off the hook too easily. It’s part and parcel of the prevailing trend in modern American politics — separate the voters from the costs of major policy decisions and you will gain their tacit support. This is especially true of anything involving our all-volunteer military. For the first time ever (I believe), our forces have been deployed in a major conflict for an extended period of time without the support of a national mobilization. In essence, the money to fund the deployment is entirely borrowed — another first. We are just barely aware that there’s a war going on, and yet the administration, members of Congress, and political pundits intone Churchillian rhetoric about the long struggle ahead, etc., etc., as if to sell the American public on a flattering image of itself as a defiant, heroic people facing incredible odds (like Britain during the blitz) without the inconvenience of, well, any actual sacrifice… unless you are among the unlucky minority with family members in the military. 

And when the inevitable happens — when it becomes clear that our soldiers are cracking under the stress of multiple tours of duty and shooting civilians like Cheney shoots caged quail — how do we react? Well, the military begins by blaming the messengers, calling the journalists who follow the stories traitors and dupes of al Qaeda, etc. After about 3 or 4 months of that, when they’re forced by mounting evidence to admit to some portion of the ugly truth, it becomes the individual soldiers’ fault. They then apply the dubious remedies of courts martial and sensitivity training slide shows, while the administration and its various flacks encourage us to look at the bigger picture (it took an endless war to get conservatives talking about “context”). But there’s one thing Bush’s cousin Tony Snow won’t tell us at the daily briefing — we are more responsible for those deaths than the soldiers who pull the trigger. This is the result of a criminal foreign policy, and because we enjoy the unparalleled freedoms of American democracy, we must also accept the responsibility for what our elected officials get us into. 

Our soldiers have very few options. We have many. If we don’t want them to kill, we should bring them the fuck home. Now.