Lest We Forget

With all the folderol lately on the anniversary of the Iraq war, the beginning of the Iraq war, I suppose, we tend to forget that distant time when this country launched itself into a 10 year conflict based on a tissue of lies. All it takes to divert the American people from thinking, remembering, or reflecting is some kind of circus, the greatest of which of course is a shooting war pitting American "heroes" against the boogie man of the hour, in this case Saddam Hussein and his crew of devils in Iraq. Mega sports events are always good for this too. in the country is generously supplied with both.

But Chris Hedges reminds us in a recent article in truthdig. He calls it "The Treason of the Intellectuals." Here's what he had to say:

The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among “Bush’s useful idiots” argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks”—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens—did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.

He goes on to say that all these worthies not only acted as cheerleaders for the war, but went out of their way to ridicule and discredit those of us – and happily I include myself – who opposed the accursed war from the very beginning. Just peruse that list of above. Many shining lights of the left (and some centrists)! And from this vantage point, you really have to wonder about these people. Al Franken? Chuck Schumer? Hedges argues that all of them were more concerned with their political fortunes then with, and I don't think it's an overstatement in this case to say: "virtue." The virtue of standing up for what is right, moral, and true.

Read the piece. Hedges is eloquent in his outrage.