Long ago, back in the '90s, the echo chamber
of the Right, drummed out a different beat. In Bosnia and Kosovo, after
those short wars were over, and our troops were doing a little nation
building, the talkshow pundits were asking, why are we doing this? When
are they coming home? And we must get out as we have Mission Creep!
Many wondered what they meant by "Mission Creep." It appeared
that the troops were complaining that they were doing things they weren't
trained for, mostly helping the population getting the infrastructure
back and helping to set up a government. Daily Rush and others complained
about the "Mission Creep". They did so until one of the other
hundred scandals of the Clinton era took off.
So now we're are in Iraq and the casualties continue to mount. The troops
are doing things they are not trained for and where is the cry of "Mission
Creep"? Well, the difference is that their guy George W. Bush is
in charge. We may be there 'til hell freezes over, but it is OK, because
that's what George wants.
The problem is that it isn't OK. The war was illegal. It was fought for
a threat that didn't exist. Four hundred million dollars and David Kay
still hasn't found a single weapon of mass destruction. But the Right-Wing
has moved on. Now we have "Reason Creep." If we can't find the
WMD's, we will say we did it for the Iraqi people. Just look at those
mass graves.
But they won't tell you where the mass graves came from. The U.S. supplied
the chemicals for weapons used by Chemical Ali and at the time no one
said boo. Later, at the end of the Gulf War, we gave the go ahead for
Saddam to use his helicopters. The Iraqi's mounted machine guns on them
and stopped the Marsh Arabs dead in their tracks. The first Bush administration
said "revolt, take out Saddam." But then he gave Hussein the
way to save himself. This led to the "No-fly Zones" which stopped
the blood bath, but only after the fact.
Now we are rebuilding Iraq, after a short, sharp war. "Nation Building"
is our latest mission. Now we are witnessing democracy at the point of
a gun. If this White House can't competently govern the U.S., what makes
it think it can govern another country.
So we are stuck in infinite Mission Creep with no way out. We are dumping
countless billions into rebuilding Iraq and losing our young soldiers
in the process. Operation infinite Mission Creep for the lofty and distant
goal of a "Democratic Iraq" is a bad idea and seems and, as
any non neo-con must understand, is a pipe dream. Sure, it would be nice,
but so would world peace. Iraq is too messy for a simple democratic government
and the price we Americans would have to pay looks way too high to continue.
You can't install democracy at the point of a gun, you can't force people
to be free.
For us the only thing we can hope for is to free ourselves from Mission
Creep and George W. Bush.
John Covington
is a Unix Administrator and longtime Democrat from Renton (Seattle), Washington.
