RIP Iraq

It’s the fifth anniversary of Bush’s war in Iraq. Nearly 4000 Americans have died, a small proportion of the entire death toll wrought by this madness, but, significantly, those tens of thousands of Iraqi do not count. They aren’t real people, those slaughtered thousands, in the American mind. In addition, two million Iraqis are internally displaced; two million of them live wretched as exiles in surrounding countries. Tens of thousands killed! That damns this war, and this country.

War-monger John McCain was over there the other day, completely complicit in the folly and slaughter, eager to continue on until some undefined “victory.” Whole hog into the neocon fantasy, McCain’s victory is a massive, permanent military presence in the region to safeguard the continued ruin of the planet through oil.

An excellent article on Pakistan: the recent breaking of the feudal landowners’ power; the rise of the middle class; the military’s dawning realization that they bred a monster in Islamic terrorism (lately striking at the military; talk about blowback).