Saddam In Custody

Let�s be clear here. We�re all glad Saddam�s been captured. The man�s a brute with few equals (other than some of our other favorite allies over the years like Ho Chi Min, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden, Milosovich, and on and on�). But, it�s good for the Iraqis. And it�s good for the world. I personally enjoyed seeing Saddam a humbled unwashed, unshaven, and homeless vagrant looking like a Persian Ted Kaczynski. He�s a bastard.

I suspect the resistance in Iraq will drastically decrease. It will speed up the political (I hesitate to say Democratic) reorganization of Iraq. It will reduce international resistance to U.S. actions in the region. After all, everybody loves a winner.

But you can be sure that all the gloating in the elephant cages will be worse than a drunken frat boy coming out of his third sorority girl�s bedroom in a single night.

It�s going to give a shot in the arm to the Republican Party in the 2004 election. It will be in every one of their electoral ads, from the President on down to the tiniest Representative in Whoville.

The important thing is that while Saddam has been captured, and a great deal of good will come of it, the entire process was a cornucopia of lies, deceptions, misrepresentations, sellouts, sell offs and back room deals. From the start, the rationale of invading Iraq was shifted to whatever justification got the best response from the American public. First it was connections to Al Quaeda and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Or stabilizing the region. Then it was the UN Resolutions that were ignored. (If the U.S. were not on the Security Council, with the ability to veto any UN Decision, we would be in violation of far more UN resolutions than any other country by a long shot.) Then it was the oppression of the Iraqi people, including the decades-old gassing of Iraqis that we did nothing about at the time.

Someone actually told me back when the war was still brewing that she thought we �needed the war in Iraq to help our economy.� When I asked her how she could justify killing people to support our economy, she replied �I knew I shouldn�t have started talking politics. This is why I never talk politics.� Wow.

But I don�t think she was alone. I know that while the Iraq war II was part of the hard right-wing think tank Project for a New American Century�s long-standing plan for �regional stability,� and �American global influence� it was as much an opportunity to give billion-dollar contracts to supporters of the G.O.P., and a way to keep national attention focused abroad while radical political changes were engineered at home.

This may all come out good in the end. �All�s well that ends well,� Shakespeare said, but while Hamlet is the second most frequently cited figure in English literature and writing, Jesus is the first. And Jesus would be sure to point out that the ends DO NOT justify the means. That is abundantly clear to anyone who�s actually read his words.

If indeed the ends were to �liberate� the Iraqi people and create a Democracy there, to find and capture weapons of mass destruction, and to stabilize the region, why were the tactics the Bush administration employed so deceitful, so manipulative, and so overtly politicized?

Why did the rationales shift on a nearly daily basis? Why was the UN circumvented, invalidated, and slapped in the face? Why were the American people and the world lied to, bald faced, about the WMDs? (I should remind readers here that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is so often quoted as a context for the current crisis, it was the Russians, the aggressors, who were lying about the missiles, not the Americans). Why were CIA analysts pressured to provide support for the war, and weak evidence drummed up to provide causus belli rather than the war based on the support of CIA found facts? Remember, the cart goes AFTER the horse.

And the ends do not justify the means.

If this really were for the �liberation� of the Iraqi people, and all the other reasons given in a wildly cycling search for support, wouldn�t the rational way to go about it be to first convince the International Community, then come up with effective interventions (not the pathetic no-fly zones that are used as rationale for �we tried that for 12 years�) leading towards more and more restrictive interventions, rather than war being the first and most preferred method of the administration from the start?

So while all the rabid sports fans are hooting it up that our team won the Saddam bowl, I�ll be right here, grateful that he�s no longer a menace. But I�ll remember that it was our own government who helped to arm and train him, and Osama, and Iran, and what a lying menace our own administration has been to both the American people and the International Community. And you should, too.

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