|
George W. Bush: Moral Judge
BUZZFLASH
READER COMMENTARY
by Russ Rigtrup
When you peel away all the layers of obfuscation and rationalization, our reason for attacking Iraq can be boiled down to something Bush didn't say in his State of the Union Address, but that his followers instinctively understand: "You crazy Arab bastards snuck up and kicked us in the nuts. Now it's our turn and payback's a bitch!" What actually was said was couched in the hyperbolic terms of a martyred saint railing against his evil persecutors. Saddam is the Devil and must be destroyed before he destroys all that is pure and good.
Conservatives have been telling African-Americans for years, that the centuries of slavery and legal apartheid, which existed up until barely a generation ago and within the lifetimes of adult African-Americans or their parents, give them no right to act as victims nor does it confer upon them any special entitlement. But when conservatives consider themselves the victim, they have no trouble in claiming extraordinary rights of redress.
Being victimized can be parlayed into moral leverage. Of course, that leverage is labeled as wrong if used by African-Americans to advantage themselves, and the will of God if used by conservatives to defend entrenched interests. From the conservative point of view, moral leverage ought to be the sole purview of those whom wealth and privilege have made morally superior. Moral superiority justifies the actions of those who possess it.
9/11 has become Bush's Reichstag fire; allowing him to play the victim and claim the moral high ground, while also allowing him to claim both the right of retribution against all of his enemies and the right to sit in moral judgment over the rest of the world. Now he can do more than merely sneer, harass and preach at those he views as morally inferior around the world; he has the justification to unleash the awesome power at his command for any action that serves those ends. For a man who already considers himself morally superior to anyone who disagrees with him politically, this is a gift from heaven.
Bush's real justification for war is not the chemical or biological weapons that his father's cronies sold Saddam, or oil, or any of tenuous links that he claims exists between Al Quida and Baghdad, or the settling of a family vendetta. These are mere icing on the cake. Bush views the 9/11 attack as a sign from God that it his right to rid the world of Evil, as he sees it.
Anyone who thinks the fall of Baghdad will bring an end to preemptive American strikes against countries that have never launched an attack against our homeland, is woefully mistaken. Influential people within the Bush administration have made it abundantly clear that Iraq is but the first act in a global pogrom aimed at all those who fail to recognize and obey the moral authority of the Bush Cartel. The only question is whether Syria or Libya will be next.
In a real sense, Bush has gained the world while losing his soul. In his fiery crusade to rid the world of those he "knows" to be evil, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions will die and you and I will be told little of it, for it is hard to justify that the instigation of mass slaughter is itself not evil.
Few of us have any idea how many died on the battlefield during the last Gulf War, because large numbers of Iraqi soldiers were machine-gunned and then buried, dead-or-alive, by bulldozers. All traces of their gruesome deaths were sanitized before the media ever saw the battleground (a Bush family practice that dates back to the invasion of Panama). It's a ghastly act, the likes of which has caused war crimes prosecution for practitioners of similar deeds in Kosovo. Remember that Gulf War I was supposedly a sterile war because of the low numbers of American lives lost on the battlefield (while the ignoring the large numbers of Gulf War vets who sickened and died after returning home).
While no one on our side has ever tried to give a full accounting of the true cost of that war in human lives; estimates range as high as half a million. If that many died in a "sterile" war, how many will perish in a full on global "rooting out" of Evil? A figure in the millions is not inconceivable. Throw in a couple of thermonuclear bunker-buster tactical munitions used in a first strike, as the Bush brain trust contemplates, and the numbers may go up exponentially.
Atrocities have already been committed in our name in Afghanistan. Not just the accidental bombing of a wedding, a mosque or a school, but the deliberate and brutal massacre of hundreds unarmed Taliban prisoners by Northern Alliance troops in the presence of their US Special Forces military advisors, who were nominally in command of these forces. There is no reason to believe that these atrocities will not be repeated and surpassed when our Kurdish allies get their hands on the hated Sunnis, who have been oppressing the Kurds for decades. Will our troops intervene or stand mute as surrendered soldiers receive their just desserts? In the mind of Bush, anything done to destroy Evil cannot itself be evil.
It was Jesus who most succinctly framed the dangers of setting yourself in moral judgment of others: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." "Judge not, lest ye be judged." While it is easy to see Evil as a cut and dried absolute, it is also much easier to see the evil in others than in oneself. It's a moral message that was buried in the rubble of 9/11, at least for George W. Bush. Just because he is pursuing Evil does not absolve him of responsibility for evil actions done in the pursuit.
BUZZFLASH
READER COMMENTARY
Articles in the BuzzFlash Contributor section are posted as-is. Given the timeliness of some Contributor articles, BuzzFlash cannot verify or guarantee the accuracy of every word. We strive to correct inaccuracies when they are brought to our attention.
