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War
Five ropes await
The only way to avoid war coming home to America is for that nation to demonstrate genuine remorse to the world
By Kevin Potvin
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Not one amongst all the leading potential candidates for US president has so far seemed to grasp the enormity of the affront to humanity that has been the shameful 78 months of the Bush presidency. For years after 1975, the subject of The Lessons of Vietnam filled countless op-ed pages and filled shelves in libraries, and that theme has been a staple jumping-off point into the whole field of foreign policy on the campaign trails of all candidates in all elections since then. Yet, four catastrophic years into yet another enormously destructive and unprovoked war, the headline, “The Lessons of Iraq,” has yet to appear on op-ed pages or anywhere near the top of any presidential candidate’s speech. There are lessons aplenty to learn, though.
This remains a vast blind spot for the whole American leadership cadre. While Democrats argue about how soon to pull out of Iraq and Republicans argue about how fast to pull out of Iraq, none of them seem to have noticed that their opponents in this nasty war are not talking about pulling out, going home, redeploying or returning to barracks. While it would be appallingly callous to say the opponent is winning this war with up to a million Iraqis dead and most infrastructure destroyed, it is beyond dispute that America has soundly lost this war, and the last time anyone checked, losers still don’t get to dictate terms of peace. Terms are dictated to them: this is the point of fighting.
Defenders of the Bush cabal have one thing right. Pulling US forces out of Iraq, even if that were physically possible, would not end exposure of US forces, or US cities, to attack, and would likely heighten that risk. Whatever form they manifest in, and they always manifest, the rules of history are never breached: Anyone who ever started a war that they then lost pays a very dear price. And with no connection between 9/11 and Baghdad, or between Baghdad and fanatical terrorists generally, or with any weapons of mass destruction, there can be no doubt who started this unnecessary war, just as there is no doubt who is losing it, even if no winner is evident.
One way or another, whether sooner or later, the bill to be paid by America for the mistakes of the Bush administration will come to the table and everyone at the table—all Americans—will have to pay. There may be a lot of Canadians who have family and friends in the US, people who may be just as appalled as we are at what has happened, but the bill is indiscriminate and inescapable and it will be high nevertheless for all of them. This is a fact of American life to prepare for, not to doubt, debate or cast blame about.
But it is doubtful anyway that 150,000 US forces can even be extracted from the over 100 hardened bases scattered around that desert. There has been, for example, no discussion of how, practically, they can be moved over roads that belong to the opponent, including the only road to the only airport capable of handling troop planes. But even if that were somehow accomplished, leaving Iraq does not end the war. The prophecy shared by the White House will be self-fulfilling and the war will come home to innocent American civilians in their cities, if perhaps not to the same degree that war was brought home to innocent Iraqi civilians by American troops.
This is a matter of grave interest to Canadians who, being geographically and morally close to Americans, will suffer a great deal of spill-over effect the uglier things get in that country.
Canada can, however, suggest a way for America to avoid this ugly result and in the process save itself much damage. But it would take a whole different approach to leadership in that country, a leadership risen from a whole different crop of presidential candidates than any of the ones on offer today. And yet this potential solution is the one Canada must back.
What is the only way the US might avoid the war following their troops home from Iraq? To begin with, the US needs a new leader to apologize to the whole world and to express sincere remorse for the crimes committed by the nation. Next, the leader must begin a process to re-write the US constitution in the manner of previously defeated world-threatening countries like Germany and Japan, such that expenditures on war materiel and troop levels is limited strictly to defensive levels, defense being understood to mean defense over only US soil and not including any of the typical American nonsense about extended interests around the world.
Next, the US must make reparations payments. A typical penalty in law is three times the proceeds of crime, and in this case, that would add up to about $3 trillion. It needn’t be paid out all at once, but rather over the next 30 years at $100 billion per year, perhaps. The payments don’t all have to go to Iraq alone but can be administered by a UN-like body. One idea would be for the payments to support a global old age security system. That $100 billion would provide $1,000 a year to everyone in the world over the age of 60. Nothing reduces the pressure on population growth and hence on resources and the environment than the best-ever innovation in policy history, the universal old age pension. As this war was about grabbing declining natural resources, it seems appropriate to direct reparations payments to the only known method of restraining pressures on those resources.
Third, the US must sign on to the International Criminal Court treaty, and to demonstrate their resolve to reform their militaristic ways, the nation needs to arrest and hand over to that court the Gang of Five: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell (yes, him too, he lied to the UN), and of course Bush. I’m no fan of capital punishment, but if these five were to be photographed by the world press swinging from the end of five ropes, it just might go some way toward tempering the immediate anger of millions of those whose lives have been destroyed by the whimsical, illegal, and ill-considered decisions of these five people.
Canada should adopt this aim in its foreign policy and gather an international consensus around it, including members of the more enlightened US leadership, because any alternative will bring intolerable harm to Canada and the Western nations.
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