War,by its nature, is an event that cannot be controlled. All kinds of wise heads have their individual predictions, but let us keep in mind that one of the main themes is lack of agreement. This one thinks that will happen, while that one thinks this will happen. Clearly the Administration thinks it can accomplish certain ends by making war, and it relies on the Pentagon for ideas about what is needed in order for the war to be successful.
The thing is that the motive for the war is not real, but is itself imagined. The leader of Iraq is thought to be dangerous and needs to be replaced, and the weapons of mass destruction under his control destroyed or removed. Iraq's potential as an enemy is the reason we make war, not its factual nature as an active enemy. All the thinking / reasoning is based upon our self made images of what Iraq might do in the future that is dangerous, not on what they are doing in the present that is morally horrifying and destructive.
All of this, from the intentions of the Administration to the promises of the Pentagon, are completely in accord with the War in Vietnam, which we lost, and within which a whole generation of our youth were spiritually lost as well.
The Pentagon promised it could defeat the Vietnamese, but could not, making the error that primitive indigenous people would have no heart for protracted and difficult combat. We made of the Vietnamese a dehumanized people, and of their leaders, communist bogeymen. Even near the end, when our defeat was obvious and when Nixon and Kissinger committed clear war crimes, we could not win.
Why?
Well, I think George Washington would say this. We, having been the true aggressors, were in the wrong. Lacking a real moral basis for conflict we did not have "the blessings of heaven upon our arms." Having put ourselves into the chaotic field of war, we lacked the spiritual grit that belongs to those in the right, something needed at every level in order to prosecute such an event to its just and righteous conclusion. Our people did not believe in it (it almost destroyed us as a Nation during Vietnam), nor really did our armies. It was an intellectual exercise, made by old men sitting in Washington - something of the head, not the heart.
But war is not an intellectual exercise. It is a horrible necessity, perhaps forced upon a People, but something which no one in their right minds seeks out as a policy, foreign or domestic. As a policy it is morally repugnant, and because of this no human being can draw from their soul those powers of might and will that are needed to bring Victory.
To know the error of the Bush Administration, all we have to do is listen to the Drums of War - all the efforts made to create the belief in the need for war. No one in the right ever needs to beat the Drums of War - if there is a true need that will be obvious. Yet, we forget that the Johnson Administration faked the necessity for the invasion of Vietnam, and standing on the sand of that vain lie, we fell to our destruction. There will be no Victory, in such a repeat of this situation, only the Bagpipes of Sorrow as the dead are buried, the maimed ignored and hidden, and the spiritual heart of the Republic shattered into ruins.
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After this was written, a reader submitted the following quote from Julius Caesar:
""Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know ? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." Originally posted January 02, 2003.
