Bush's War in the Middle East
Sadly, in a few short months it began to change. First, it was President Bush’s rhetoric about “preemptive strikes.” His voice hardened with subsequent “you’re either with us or against us.” It reached a crescendo with his “axis of evil” address during which he lumped the disparate nations of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea into one sinister category.

As the drumbeat for war on Iraq revved up, it was hard to believe that such a preposterous, potentially counterproductive threat could be carried out. Where were the dissenting politicians? Where were the major elements of the mainstream media? And how could responsible Americans in high places stand by while our Secretary of Defense was hurling vicious, degrading insults at our longstanding European allies?

But then again, maybe it isn’t so hard to believe. The nation seemed paralyzed by fear, transfixed, unable to put anything in rational perspective. People wanted revenge on somebody, and a vicious dictator from the Middle East who had been a recent enemy was as handy as anybody, and a target that was tempting for an administration under fire for a stalled economy and tainted by scandal. There’s nothing like an external threat and American troops marching to battle that revs up the patriotic fervor and makes it so easy for a president to rally people behind him. Never mind that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It was all too tempting and too easy for the administration—-Iraq would be tied to 9/11, and a measure of “revenge” would be extracted.

I was only one of many Americans in the Middle East at the time and do not purport to speak for the rest of them. But all the Americans overseas that I knew at the time thought invasion of Iraq not to be a good idea.

It was soon evident that invasion was inevitable. The conquest of the land mass was the easy part. It is one thing to occupy territory and to topple the ruling regime. It is quite another to occupy a nation and rebuild it once it is destroyed. The naive and false assumptions, lack of post-invasion planning, colossal mistakes, corruption, and just plain incompetence in the post-invasion phase are the subjects of numerous books that have been written since.

What many of us find so distasteful apart from the tragic human and economic cost of this war is the attempt by the Administration to hide the cost of this war from the general public. The tremendous cost of this war is borne excessively by a relative few, and the cost disingenuously shielded from everybody else. Tactics used to conceal and paper over these costs include the disingenuous budgetary practice of appropriating money piecemeal under the guise of “emergency appropriations,” instead of the normal annual requests. The actual number of troops with grievous wounds, and those who need psychiatric help, are not readily revealed. Instead of raising taxes to pay for the war, taxes were reduced for the richest five percent or so of Americans while the rest of us were urged to “go shopping.” Most tragic of all, the same troops are recycled over and over again.

This war has been going on for longer than WW II, and still no draft. Of course, resort to a draft would generate so much opposition that it would stop on a dime. The willingness of Americans across the demographic spectrum to participate would be the true test of support for a war. And it’s clear that this nation would not now stand still for a general draft of its youth for this war. But I digress.

Click on a chapter title to read more...
Growing Up in Green County
From Farm Boy to Marine
Education: Fulfillment of "The Epiphany"
Influences of the 1960s
My Career: University of Minnesota
My Career: New Mexico State University & Sultan Qaboos University in Oman
Bush's War in the Middle East
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