We're all complicit

We can scream at "the centrists" who seem lately to be growing, literally, demented as they try to explain not only their vote for the war during it's run-up, but also their ongoing support for the course being stayed (or worse). But in the end, Billmon is right, we're all guilty.

The point deserves frequent repetition: We did this. We caused it. We're not just callous bystanders to genocide, as in Rwanda, but the active ingredient that made it possible. We turned Iraq into a happy hunting ground for Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army. If Iraq is now a failed state, it's because of our failures.

But one can fully accept America's moral and legal responsibility for unleashing this barbarism and still not have a clue as to what can or should be done to stop it. Would a U.S. military withdrawal reduce the bloodshed or worsen it? I don't know, and I think anyone who says they do know is either lying or as deluded as Bush. But my intuition tells me that either way, whether we stay or go, thousands more, maybe millions more, are going to die.

A certain hoplessness [sic], you see.

For someone in my shoes, though, hopelessness can become an excuse for not thinking about unpleasant truths. But there was something about Riverbend's quiet despair that forced me to think hard about my own moral responsibility as an American for a genocide caused by America -- because of a war started in my name, paid for with my taxes.

I've opposed this war since it was just a malignant smirk on George Bush's face. I've spoken against it, written against it, marched against it, supported and contributed to politicians I generally despise because I thought (wrongly) that they might do something to stop it. It's why I took up blogging, why I started this blog.

But the question Riverbend has forced me to ask myself is: Did I do enough? And the only honest answer is no.

I opposed the invasion -- and the regime that launched it -- but I didn't do everything I could have done. Very few did. We may have put our words and our wallets on the line, but not our bodies. Not when it might have made a difference. In the end, we were all good little Germans.

I feel particularly complicit. While the invasion was being "debated (such as it was)," I argued that forced regime change in Iraq was good policy. It was right to want to remove the murderous thug and his henchmen. It was right to end the sanctions that were killing Iraqis anyway. And it was probably going to take the threat of force to do it, by putting troops right on the border. I did argue that the Bush regime were the wrong people to do this. That they didn't take troop levels seriously, and they didn't take seriously what was going to happen after Saddam's fall. So I opposed the war on reality-based, but not philosophical terms.

I was wrong to provide any intellectual cover for this. Completely wrong.

And now I feel as hopeless as Billmon. There is no good answer for Iraq right now. No good answer for the Iraqi people. No good answer for our troops who bravely say they want to "see this thing out." But there may be no "out." And we are responsible.