Vice President Dick Cheney rolled out the heavy artillery to try to squash any and all opposition to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell War in Iraq. It’s always interesting how “Darth” Cheney always appears from his appointed task of running the shadow government somewhere to don his cape and quell discussion and debate over whatever questionable administration policy has seized the moment. He always adds the “adult” voice to the chorus after all the “young un’s” like Condoleeza Rice have flailed away fruitlessly attempting to sway public opinion in the administration’s favor. The implied message to us all is: “Hush up now. Daddy’s home. Mind your manners.”

Cheney warned us all about the big, bad, boogie day of doom that awaits us all if we don’t toe the line. He tried very hard to frighten as many people as he could with his portrayal of the horrors that are in store if we don’t let these administration cowboys continue to round up and dispose of the terrorist herd at will.

Oh, and anyone who disagrees with him is a wimp.

Well, Dick, I noticed you delivered your bold message at the Heritage Foundation, the well-endowed incubator of conservative thought. Who’s the wimp here? If that ain’t preaching to the choir, I don’t know what is.

Cheney also re-wrote the justification for the war yet again and has made it so vague this time that it should be pretty hard for anyone to try to paraphrase just what it was. Needless to say, we are fighting it for some fluid reason, and we are there in the middle of it now. Everyone should probably just give up trying to justify or un-justify it. That discussion is going nowhere. We are fighting it because the Cubs haven’t won the World Series since 1908. How’s that?

It’s pretty clear that nothing short of electoral defeat or impeachment will stop the war from the administration’s perspective, and since Congress is in the hands of the Republicans, they’ll just go keep going along for the merry ride. Heck, the Democrats are doing the same thing.

Since we now have an all volunteer military, there will be little protest from the youth of America like there was during the Vietnam era, when that war loomed as everyone’s graduation present. The military is now composed of career professionals, not draftees. (Very smart move.) It’s a corporate job now, and they are just part of the assembly line taking direction from the suits in the front office. The real victims are the growing number of fatherless children who are still too small to have a voice in all this. In about fifteen years, though, there may be a nasty noise and rumble. That ought to give the administration enough time to accomplish whatever they hope to accomplish and clear out.

I think we should respond to Cheney by saying: “All right, Darth, you’ve got what you wanted. The war is yours, now please win it. You have all the money. You have all the soldiers. Don’t expect international assistance or domestic accord over it. You started it without it. So, finish it without it. The major media have soft-pedaled and glorified the whole thing because they are along for the corporate ride, too. They see fatter paychecks, too. They have leveraged the war for better ratings and better advertising revenues. They have invested in your party. They have supplied champagne to celebrate whenever there is something to celebrate. There may be a few lunatics left out there questioning the whole operation, and the Iraqi people may be suffering through your trial by p.r., but they don’t really matter, do they? What matters is proving your point, so prove it. No one is stopping you. Why all the fuss? If things get a little sticky down the road, just pull out the fear factor again, and again. Nothing works better than a little irrational fear to get people to stick their heads in the sand. The Chicken Little yell of ‘the sky is falling’ can still pack a wallop. Fear freezes the body, mind, and spirit. It works. It’s working. There are no riots in the streets. There is no glorious anti-war rhetoric. The American public has submitted. You don’t need to justify the unjustifiable. You already did it. You started your war, and no one said ‘boo.’ You divided the world into the good (us) and the evil (them). Your action is the justification. The results are the justification. If you get your way, then what does it matter what anyone else thinks? Stop trying the sell the war. Wage the war. Shut down the p.r. machine. It’s not working. No one believes you any more, at least not your words, which change with every shift of the breeze. Go about your business. Go back to shadow land. Things make sense there. Out in the mélange of interplay, interaction, dialogue, dispute, diversity, chaos, opinion, and people your ideas fail. They are sellable only to a few, and they bought them long ago. The real world is much more difficult than any one of us can hope to encompass. Go back to familiar turf, the golden turf, the home turf. Send us all an e-mail when it’s over, and maybe save a few drops of that champagne to enjoy at the party. Stop trying to portray the world as if it were heaven, where only the rightfully prepared will be allowed entry. Heaven awaits. The world is here in front of us in an ever-changing now. It offers its own transitory rewards. It cannot be controlled, and you, Darth, are lost without that complete control, aren’t you? Without that, none of what you are saying makes any sense.”

Bart Whiteman
Bartwhiteman@aol.com