As Iraq descends into chaos again, more than a
decade after "Mission Accomplished," media commentators and politicians
have mostly agreed upon calling the war a "mistake." But the "mistake"
rhetoric is the language of denial, not contrition: it minimizes the
Iraq War’s disastrous consequences, removes blame, and deprives
Americans of any chance to learn from our generation’s foreign policy
disaster. The Iraq War was not a "mistake" — it resulted from calculated
deception. The painful, unvarnished fact is that we were lied to. Now
is the time to have the willingness to say that.
I’ve written and spoken widely about this topic, so today I offer two ways we can begin to address our role:
1) President Obama must tell us the truth about Iraq and the false scenario that caused us to go to war.
When Obama took office in 2008, he announced that his administration would not investigate or prosecute the architects of the Iraq War. Essentially, he suspended public debate about the war. That may have felt good in the short term for those who wanted to move on, but when you’re talking about a war initiated through lies, bygones can’t be bygones.
The unwillingness to confront the truth about the Iraq War has induced a form of amnesia which is hazardous to our nation’s health. Willful forgetting doesn’t heal, it opens the door to more lying. As today’s debate ensues about new potential military "solutions" to stem violence in Iraq, let’s remember how and why we intervened in Iraq in 2003.
2) Journalists and media commentators should stop giving inordinate air and print time to people who were either utterly wrong in their support of the war or willful in their calculations to make war.
By and large, our Fourth Estate accepted uncritically the imperative for war described by top administration officials and congressional leaders. The media fanned the flames of war by not giving adequate coverage to the arguments against military intervention.
President Obama didn’t start the Iraq War, but he has the opportunity now to tell the truth. That we were wrong to go in. That the cause of war was unjust. That more problems were created by military intervention than solved. That the present violence and chaos in Iraq derives from the decision which took America to war in 2003. More than a decade later, it should not take courage to point out the Iraq war was based on lies. Voltaire Network | Washington D. C. (États-Unis)
Source Huffington Post
Mass Murdering Homo Sapiens Are NOT "Warriors For Freedom"!!! NOT "Warriors For Freedom": Mass Murdering Homo Sapiens !!
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