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03/19/2006:

"Bob Herbert Doesn't Get It: It's About Empire, Not Democracy"

American liberals, even left-liberals, just don't get United States (U.S.) imperialism.

For an excellent case in point, see a recent opinion-editorial titled "Stop Bush's War" by Bob Herbert, who is probably the "liberal" New York Times' leftmost columnist (Hebert, "Stop Bush's War, New York Times, 16 March 2006, p. A23).

The column makes some excellent points. Herbert is right to say that "an ocean of blood has been shed" in the criminal occupation of Iraq whether the total Iraqi body count is as low as president Bush says (30,000) or (as numerous responsible investigators say) well into six figures.

Herbert is right to say that "there's no end to this tragic [blood] flow in sight." He's right to observe that many of the war's supporters hold a fundamentally "deprav[ed]" thought: "that the best way to fight [the current Iraq war] is with other people's children." He's right to remind us of "the formerly healthy men and women who have come back to the United States from Iraq paralyzed or without their arms or legs or eyes or the full use of their minds." He's right to quote David Halberstam to the effect that U.S. foreign policymakers' desire to be seen as "tough" and "strong" is part of the reason for the continuing bloodshed in Iraq.

But Herbert is wrong to call "Bush's war" "mindless" and to see little more than the timeless "madness" and "folly" of blind and power-mad elites in the making of both the U.S. assault on Vietnam and the current U.S. occupation of Iraq. He's wrong to think it is telling, relevant, and useful to quote Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam-era special assistant Jack Valenti on "how difficult it is 'to impress democracy' on other countries." He's wrong to take the Bush administration seriously when it says it wants a free and democratic Iraq, as he does when he says that "the democracy that was supposed to flower in Iraq and then spread throughout the Middle East was as much a mirage as the weapons of mass destruction."

The notion that the White House wants "democracy in Iraq and the Middle East" has never been anything more than a childish fairly tale concocted to cover imperial machinations. Herbert is engaging in wildly wishful thinking and whistling in the wind of imperial arrogance when he says that "the White House should be working cooperatively with members of both parties in Congress to figure out the best way to bring the curtain down on U.S. involvement."
zmag.org