WARS "R" US

The number of Americans killed while fighting in the Middle East has now
topped the number of Americans killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center. We're fast approaching 3,000 killed in Iraq. In her
weekly column, Ann Coulter recently wrote that if we stayed in Iraq 10
years and lost another 3,000, that would be an acceptable loss if we don't
have another terrorist attack on American soil. I disagree.

Not just because I think she has the worst legs in America (which would
have been unleashed at Abu Ghraib if not in direct violation of the Geneva
Accords), but also because I think that Ann (at this point, if I were Ann,
I'd insert something like, "Ann, which is short for Hassann"--she does that
all the time when referring to Democrats and thinks it's funny) epitomizes
the face of false and deceptive bravado that is a hallmark of the far right
of American politics.

What we are fighting in the Middle East has been broadly called the War on
Terror, a name that not even Donald Rumsfeld approved of. By casting that
war in the same generality as the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty or the
War on Crime (all begun in my lifetime and all still being "fought"), its
easy to keep promoting it because, after all, who isn't against drugs,
poverty, crime or terror?

Foolish people listen to the likes of Ann (Hassann) Coulter, reveling in
her caustic bombardment of any American who finds cause to pause and
consider that the war in Iraq is not worth fighting, even if she says so.
What is worth it to Ann is not worth it to me. Especially not in the manner
that the war has been sold, promoted and fought by the Bush administration.

As far as I'm concerned, the first American soldier to die in Iraq was
unjustified, let alone the next 2,999. Like most of you, after 9/11, I was
all for going after the bad guys, which we were told were in Afghanistan. I
don't need to go through the litany of events that took us into Iraq, but I
never supported that war for even a moment.

That it has gone poorly is not even a mild understatement. The unfortunate
consequence of the Bush team screwing up so badly is that our leaving might
make matters worse.

Then, let them be worse.

For what could be worse than this: In the past few years, Americans have
watched the chiseling away of one freedom after another.

We are not so free as we think, we Americans. Nor are we so safe. Here's a
revelatory tidbit, again from a conservative right-winger, Pat Buchanan,
long an outspoken and frequent critic of the Bush administration and of the
war in Iraq. He now thinks we can't leave because it would make matters
worse in the Middle East. Arianna Huffington deliciously nailed him by
calling him the anti-Kerry--he was against the war before he was for it.
But, before he was for the war he was against, Pat passed along a sorry
note that evaded nearly all Americans.

He wrote a few months ago--to the eyes of a few, apparently--that while
everyone is wringing their hands over the number of soldiers killed
fighting terror, that over 85,000 Americans had been murdered since 9/11.
After the Vietnam War, we built a wall to commemorate the 58,000 soldiers
killed there in about 17 years.

At that pace, a similar wall for American murder victims would bear the
names of over a quarter million people, the equivalent of over 90 WTC
attacks, the same fearful attacks scary Ann thinks are coming if we depart
Iraq. If you watch Fox News, you likely only heard of the Holloway
disappearance or the Ramsey murder, but there it is on the FBI Website for
all to see--we average over 16,000 murders a year in the United States.
Believe it or not, that's down about 30 percent from a decade ago.

So, how come there's no clamor about that? Ya got me! All I know is that in
these twisted times, I once wrote that there are more murders annually in
Salt Lake County than in all of Greece and that someone--I presume a Fox
News nitwit--wrote back to me that if I loved Greece, so much I should move
my ass out of Utah. It was only a comparative line, not a renouncement of
my citizenship, but that was the reply.

We are not really serious about fighting the War on Crime, let alone the
war in Iraq. Such wars are not for fighting, really, not even about winning.

They're about sustaining. They're about picking sides and alignments and
they're about getting out of the way and sending someone else do the real
fighting.

The War on Crime is working as long as no crime is committed against you.
The poor are not so poor when you give a buck at Christmas, are they? And
heck, since you quit smoking pot 20 years ago, the War on Drugs is going
well, too. We are fighting and winning so many wars all at once, it's small
wonder people like nasty Ann cite such as evidence America is the greatest
country in the history of man. Which is really the rub. Advocates for an
even better America are belittled as weak-willed America haters.

A brilliant tactic, really.

We can't stop fighting in Iraq, for if we do, the terrorists will have
won--so it goes. Somewhere out there, an armed, American drug lord is
smiling, knowing al-Qaeda has nothing to worry about.