Bush’s World of Hate

President Bush recently set forth a remarkable argument for continuing the war in Iraq.  In addressing the convention of The Veterans of Foreign Wars in Utah, he declared that the best way to honor the US servicemen killed in Iraq is to continue fighting the war.  According to his strange logic, the dead deserve to be accompanied by yet more dead.  In Bush’s words, “We owe them something.  We will finish the task they gave their lives for.”  The president later added that “we’ll honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists.”

Bush comes from the world of macho men, those who stick to their guns and shoot first ask questions later.  He insists on blundering down a treacherous road in order to avoid changing direction and perhaps being perceived as weak or indecisive.  Making reference to the anti-war protesters and their calls for withdrawal, Bush has said that they are “advocating a policy that would weaken the United States.”  Just as with his blunt reasoning that dead deserve more dead, his entire judgment of how to proceed against terrorism is fundamentally flawed. 

It is true that the United States was attacked in September 2001 and that close to three thousand people died in New York and Washington.   However, this attack was an act of terrorism, not war, and Bush’s grand mistake has been to frame the US response as a war directed at states such as Afghanistan and Iraq.  Terrorism merits a stiff response, but I would suggest that this response be effective law enforcement and intelligence gathering directed at individuals and militant groups rather than outright warfare directed at states and their citizens.  The military should be used as a last resort, when surgical strikes against terrorist installations are the most effective means of diminishing the terrorist threat.  

Consider the world of hate that Bush’s policies have created.

In Afghanistan, aside from the several hundred US servicemen killed, it is estimated that over twenty thousand Afghani civilians have been killed in the US-led invasion.  In Iraq, depending on which source one reviews, the estimates for civilian dead during the US invasion and occupation range from 23,500 (from Iraq Body Count, a non-profit organization) to over one hundred thousand (The Lancet, a medical journal).  Imagine for a moment the anger and hatred spawned by just one death.  Families grieve, while brothers and cousins, sons and fathers, all might vow revenge against those who killed their loved one.  This is especially true in the “eye for an eye” world of the Muslim populations. 

Now imagine all of this hatred, engendered in the families of over one hundred thousand dead civilians, spreading not only through their immediate communities but also throughout the Muslim world by media channels such as radio, television, and the internet.  Images are transmitted of dead Iraqi children, of bodies blown to pieces by US bombs, of civilians wrongly killed at US checkpoints.  These are graphic scenes that stay in one’s consciousness, sometimes forever.

In addition to the civilian dead and more than two thousand dead US soldiers, plus the twelve thousand US wounded, Bush’s ill-conceived wars have resulted in the squandering of several hundred billion dollars, with estimates as high as one trillion dollars for the eventual cost of the two wars combined.  With the entire US intelligence apparatus costing approximately $30 billion per year, imagine what Bush could have done with even $50 billion directed at intelligence gathering and law enforcement.  Imagine the good will that might have been created throughout the world if we had spent a fraction of the wars’ cost to build up our defenses against terrorism, diligently pursue the individuals responsible for terrorism, and at the same time help Muslim populations with aid for food, health, and education.  That course, I believe, would have resulted in a safer United States, and also a high degree of respect for our nation as a true world leader.