Ten years in Iraq

I read that more than 1,000 Iraqis were slain in Iraq during May, reportedly the most to die from violence there since 2008. Such carnage continues unabated since we declared victory and departed. There’s been plenty of reflection within the formerly cheerleading national media 10 years after we invaded that nation for whatever flawed justification was proffered by the government. The latest tragic statistics prompted me to take another look at my column published Feb. 15, 2003, a few weeks before our Iraq invasion.

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I’ve lately developed an unpeaceful, queasy feeling deep in my gut. It’s caused by the Bush administration’s single minded determination to defeat a hornet with the equivalent of a sheet-sized, laser-guided titanium fly swatter.

I might refer to it as a war, like TV’s hypestering “Countdown-Iraqers” are eager to do, except that increasingly I see our long-announced invasion as storming headlong into a sovereign country of already oppressed people. Once there we will commit wholesale devastation and risk many American lives in an attempt to eliminate one man.

And after the smoke clears, then what?

Indeed, Iraq might be able to supply terrorists with the same weapons of mass destruction we possess. But so might a number of other unstable and relatively unsecured nations at this moment, all of which hold Americans and our lifestyle in equal disregard. Pakistan, North Korea and even Russia jump readily to mind.

I suppose getting Saddam Hussein is the intended purpose of having 100,000 of our nation’s precious youth meandering in the desert.

Frankly, I’ve yet to see enough hard facts to support something as potentially catastrophic as waging “war” against a country without an air force or a navy or even a committed military.

This is probably an appropriate place to insert the formal disclaimer that I consider myself as red-blooded an American as the next citizen, especially having been raised in a military family of patriots and Republican politicians. Yet for some inexplicable reason I never blindly embraced the ideologies of either political party, electing instead to judge issues and candidates on their individual merits and common sense.

So please understand, these sudden uneasy feelings have nothing whatsoever to do with political urges. They stem instead from the same signals most of us experience when we sense unseen danger around us. It’s more like my high school friend James Blackwell must have felt back in 1966 at the moment of no return when he leaped from a towering bluff into waters that proved tragically shallow. He hadn’t checked the depth beforehand.

I’m so confused at this point that I can’t even recall exactly when and how our mission to erase al-Qaida madmen evolved into invading Iraq to disarm Saddam. I recall the vast majority of those 9/11 killers being from Saudi Arabia. Was there even one Iraqi among them? Was there any evidence of even a purported association?

And weren’t we supposed to be tracking down the terrorists and eliminating them? Instead, I see the hateful and negative infection they planted inside our society continuing its relentless spread from ground zero exactly as they had hoped it would. This scourge and its fever of assorted fears are threatening our freedoms, our openness and the very civil liberties that made us democracy’s beacon of hope on the planet. Can anyone recall when we’ve lived in such a color-coded climate of endless fears?

And now, as if the damage to America isn’t already great enough, we find ourselves teetering on the brink of a decision with the potential to become inhumanly vicious and virtually never-ending.

Our nation’s leaders still have no announced plan for what will become of the tumultuous country of Iraq once we bomb and ravage it.Yet here we are eagerly preparing to invade in impressive force with our space-age weapons that in moments can easily erase cities-an entire country-from the map. And we don’t know what comes next? Why don’t we know? What’s the rush here? It’s these dangling questions that have me feeling the way I do. But my instincts and my nose have always served me well. This crusade we are hell-bent on launching remains filled with uncertainty that carries a distinctly unpleasant aroma. Many say it is the stench of oil fields fueling our macho mission rather than risking thousands of American lives to vanquish one.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche warned mankind a century ago that “he who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself.” Well, no one doubts that we have all the destructive and death-dealing, fire-breathing power we need to become one heck of a dragon in the eyes of the world.

But still I wonder: Is this hornet swat what Americans really want? Is this how we want to see ourselves, and for others sharing this world to see us? Is what we are doing now the best example of the principles on which we stand united?

If not, we need to quickly regain our senses, as well as our common sense. We should recognize that, as my old Ozarks sawmiller friend Chance Purdem would say, “There’s lots more than one way to catch and skin a skunk.”

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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.