Well, we’ve reached the horrible marker of 4,000 American soldiers dead in Iraq.
And much as Bush and Cheney and McCain tried to sell the war last week, the enormity of this number cancels out all of their hackneyed rhetoric.
For the tragic, inescapable truth is that the lives of these 4,000 troops have not been worth the life of Saddam Hussein. And anyway, almost all our troops died after Saddam was toppled in the first volleys of the war.
The rest have died for oil and empire and megalomania. 4,000 Americans—and more Iraqis by a factor of 50 or 100 or 250.
A horrific toll.
And now we are told, by Bush and many pundits, that we who have slaughtered so many must stay longer (and inevitably kill more) so as to prevent the possibility of even more Iraqis dying?
Hey, we’re not on the moral high ground here.
And Bush’s much-vaunted surge appears to be wearing out its welcome. As Juan Cole notes, the number of daily Iraqi attacks is rising.
The rocket barrage on the Green Zone over the weekend belies the claims of boosted security.
And the Shiites and Sunnis seem more at each other’s throats than ever, as Patrick Cockburn reports.
By now, the American people have had enough.
Last week, I was vacationing on Sanibel Island, Florida. But I took an hour off to attend an anti-war rally there, on the traffic-jammed main drag. Even there, in this heavily Republican area, the tide has gone out on the war.
The response to the 60-person protest, across the street from an eagle’s nest, was overwhelmingly positive.
And one sign sticks with me: “Peace Hopefully Soon.”
That’s not exactly a demand. It’s no “Peace Now,” or “Immediate Withdrawal.”
But in its gentle and polite way, it mourned the 4,000 dead and expressed the wishes of most of us.