We've Already Lost In Iraq

JOE MAYER

President Bush continues to hype the need for "winning" the war in Iraq, yet he refuses to define "winning." Are we winning as we impose the largest embassy in the world and multiple military bases in Iraq , and because we expect that country to become another satellite democracy in the Middle East? "Winning" should constitute repairing all that we have destroyed, and restoring not only the losses in Iraq but those that our nation incurred in our march to war.

Consider our multiple losses:

• The war in Iraq and the "war on Terrorism" have been blended, and Iraq has suffered the misdirected vengeance of America while Bin Laden recruits and trains.
• Military costs have bankrupted our nation not only in the promising lives that are being sacrificed, but in financial, social, moral and political costs as well. [For more information about the cost of the war in Iraq, see "Iraq war costs could top $2 trillion" in the Christian Science Monitor - ed.]
• We have lost our moral integrity with torture, rendition, domestic spying and immense untruths.
• We lost respect for ourselves and the respect of the peoples of the world.
• Through occupation and continued violence we've lost the goodwill of the Iraqi people.
• Our quest for more power has encouraged others to seek nuclear defense.
• We've accepted power as our only arbitrator in dealing with other nations.
• We've reduced our God to a nationalist war god.
• We've sacrificed our youth on the altar of violence.
• We've used false premises to betray our exhausted fighting men and women.
• Betrayal of principle keeps our young people from volunteering military service.
• As arrogant bullies we've failed in all other diplomatic endeavors.
• We've again elected hawks to clean up a mess of their own making.
• We've allowed our leaders to rationalize a dozen excuses for war when WMD didn't pan out.
• We insisted that Iraq trade wages, pensions, [and] public ownership for IMF loans and control.
• We've lost our checks and balances as Congress gave away its war powers.
• We've sacrificed our soldiers while corporate money corrupts our governance.
• We've sacrificed our navy while the administration caters the rich with tax cuts.
• We've sacrificed our marines while the administration saddles our children with debt.
• We've sacrificed our national guard with lack of armor as we've been told our only duty is to "shop."
• We've fatally weakened all our treaties designed to make the world a safer place.
• We've accepted terror for those in our prisons, detention camps, and CIA black holes.
• We've lost our perspective that international law applies to the U.S. as well as others.
• We've lost our freedoms in a supposed quest to save them.
• We lost when we reelected people promising us "endless" war.
• We lost when we reelected draft shirkers who refused to sacrifice in their youth.
• We lost when we elected politicians promising war and knowing nothing of gaining peace.
• We lost when we don't feel any safer now than before we preempted for war.
• We lost when we accepted "they hate our freedoms" as justification for war.
• We lost when we refuse to accept that injustices fuel terrorism.
• We lost when we turned to violence in order to curb violence.
• We lost when in fighting terrorism we became terrorists.
• We lost when the media became cheer leaders for violence.
• We actually lost long ago when we accepted the belief that democracy only requires us to vote every two to four years; when we believed that everything our American leaders do is democracy; when we traded in our freedoms to fight for freedom; when we began the trek from president to dictator; when we first named enemy civilian casualties as "collateral damage"; when we elected fear and warmongering.
• We lost our soul when we accepted the Iraqi war as "divinely sanctioned."