Stoopid Stuff

Surge, Lies and Patriotism

It is now an article of faith in the American political discourse that "the surge worked". Of course, anyone with better than passing familiarity with the situation in Iraq knows beyond a doubt that the surge most certainly didn't "work". When announced, the escalation of the number of American combat troops in Iraq, primarily centered around Baghdad was described as having the purpose of reducing violence in order to provide the Iraqi leadership the "breathing space" to create political reconciliation and provide the Iraqi population with desperately needed services. Now, at the end of this so-called surge, violence is certainly down. There are clearly a number of factors contributing to that salutary outcome, but it is certainly fair to say that the additional American troops is one of them. Of course, Iraq is still a basket case, locked in polirtical chaos, without any clear path to becoming a functioning society. And violence, while "down", is still horrendously high, with close to 600 Iraqis killed every month in internecine warfare between at least six different factions. No. The surge didn't work. In Iraq, nothing works.

But the interesting thing is not the broad acceptance of this blatant falsehood. The lies, and the baldly transparent agenda behind them, are every day a greater part and parcel of the political conversation in America. It is a sad, dysfunctional condition, but one we become more inured to every day. Rather, the interesting thing is that our dialog has become so poisoned that it is utterly impossible to state the obvious truth. The wisdom among politicians, press and pundit alike is that the surge worked. In spite of the obvious fact that it did not, nothing even weakly challenging this blatantly false position may be stated. It's this collective, voluntary blindness that prevents the American political process from actually doing it's job, solving problems and addressing events in a rational and realistic manner.

Similarly, there is the unquestioned "knowledge" that the nation of Iran poses a very serious threat to the United States and her interests. This is obviously not the case. Iran has no capacity to threaten the US, and Israel has a qualitative military advantage in addition to 300 nuclear weapons. The accepted wisdom that Iran constitutes a genuine military threat to the US is clearly grounded in the well-documented necessity for an unpopular and authoritarian political leadership to create a terrifying external enemy to justify unpopular, undemocratic and unconstitutional actions at home. Iran is nothing more than "the boogie man", but it is expressly forbidden to say so.

One wonders how we let ourselves get to this point. A point where recognizing or even simply commenting on reality is disallowed from the discourse. This is madness. What could be more important than matters of war and peace? And yet it is in this very arena that lies and distortions carry more weight than the actual analysis and recognition of reality. A political historian, if one were willing to destroy her career to document this descent into fantasy, would probably find deep roots. To me, it goes back to political debates over crime and drugs. No matter how wasteful and ineffectual the program, if it involved criminalizing more activities and harshly punishing offenders, it was politically desirable. Contrarily, no matter how effective alternatives might be, if they could possibly be portrayed as "soft on crime" (think for a moment about how ridiculous that phrase is) they were to be avoided as political suicide. So it began to be necessary to take positions that were utterly antithetical to effective governance, yet all the while proclaiming them to be the polar opposite, paragons of effective leadership. As the years went by, perhaps the clanging discord of these statements began to fade, and we have come to accept the conventional wisdom uncritically.

Today, in the through-the-looking-glass world of bush/cheney/rove political dialog, we are inundated by perfectly mad statements of utter falsehood. Statements that are routinely picked up but the media and repeated until they take on a patina of reality. And of course, with movies and American Idol and Mixed Martial Arts to distract us, it has become too much of a daily challenge to think these things through on our own.

What will it take for America to begin to accept the insertion of reality in her political debates? It may be far too late for that, but there was a certain hope that a President Obama would speak to Americans as adults, in complete sentences, dealing in truths rather than politically expedient distortions. Alas, with his perfectly ludicrous positions on FISA, NATO, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Quaeda, he has demonstrated that not even he has the political will to tell his constituency the truth.

Ultimately, it is necessary for us, as citizens, to try to find a way to inform ourselves. And in many cases, this requires nothing more than thinking carefully about the things they are saying, rather than accepting them at face value...

posted by mikey @ 8:57 AM