We had the worst possible administration for when that happened. If only Gore had won in 2000.
The Bush Jr. posse did everything they nearly could to abuse and exploit the massive paranoia and fear of 9/11 America, and even the things they meant well on they did with incompetence and stupidity. Probably because they didn't have to try.
They could do whatever they wanted because all they had to do was tell people it was for the sake or protecting us, and there was always a large enough body of Americans who would believe anything they were told on that subject, that Bush and friends even when large other parts caught on to them, they could survive elections and congressional votes.
To question anything was to be festooned with tar and feathers and shouted down by a chorus of people accusing you of being too soft, unpatriotic, an appeaser, against the troops etc. People were terrified and stupid because of it.
This climate still exists to a degree and people are still scared of going afoul of it.
But I don't think that article is correct to think that Americans are clueless to all of that.
I think Afghanistan is a very debateable subject.
But Iraq….ah there's the rub.
Iraq is silently haunting lots of current American politics. We were lied to by our leaders, and the mess afterwards wasn't only pointless it was also due to huge mismanagement and idiocy. It honestly seems as if the morons involved had NO CLUE about the Sunni/Shia divide there, and it's well known they had next to no aftermath plan. I think that very utter willful ignorance of the people and place we were attacking is what has cost the most lives of Iraqis and Americans alike. Had we thought out the situation maybe we could have better approached the subject and dealt with the aftermath. Avoided the civil war.
This haunts me personally as a large motive to get involved in the State Department and government's general foreign affairs, that utter incompetence is inexcusable and has it's hand on too much power. It frightens me. So I want to thrust myself into the works and make them actually work.Iraq is also hovering over our current economic woes, has us wondering about how we threw money down a toilet.
The chaos and misery STILL persisting in Iraq has everyone just wondering about how even our most optimistic justifications have come to mostly shit. We've created what...a nearly failed state? A nearly failed state that had it's freedoms thrust upon it all of a sudden by arrogant condescending outsiders? Giving no meaning to the precedings? Robbing them of their own will? Post-Saddam Iraq may not be a dictatorship anymore, but they have no heart either. An empty chaotic freedom.
At least, at least, Iraqi Kurdistan is a success... if nothing else that's the one happy story from the absolute goddamn mess that was Iraq.
But we are learning some of these lessons.
Even the jingoistic stupidly-hawkish right wing seems to have had to evolve and swallow the hard medicine of Iraq. Most of the candidates have adopted a strange new neo-isolationist party line where they consider getting involved so ehavily outside our borders a waste of money and a distraction from a hurting homefront.
Even the still hawkish looking Rick Perry who is like a more right wing Bush....has been very careful to talk about how war must be thouroughly considered and thought out. Not rushed and plowed through.
The republicans aren't openly saying it much (Ron Paul aside) but Iraq is not something they ever want to repeat either.
Libya has me smiling, because our involvement there has been the anti-Iraq so far. Largely because we put the Libyans first. But I think I've said most of my thoughts on that already.
But as the Arab Spring keeps raging, optimistic as much of it is.....Syria, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, ...yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Oman etc etc....no matter the outcome, no matter how long the hard long period of reconstruction, even if they fail.....they can hold their heads high and mighty as they know how they fought bled and died for the stab at their own unknown futures. Pride, renewed pride in a region that used to be the primary first world back in the day and has been aching from this lost world (much like China), flourishes...
Sitting depressed on the sideline....is Iraq. Robbed of this chance to participate. And lagging behind all (but yemen) in successes and living standards. And having none of this pride...just pain. Bush said he wanted to give Iraq a chance to be free, but freedom is more than laws and government. Freedom is a state of mind. And you can never force it. It has to grow. And so instead of giving freedom, we robbed Iraq of it.