Ten Years After

PBS's News Hour ran a segment yesterday about the anniversary of the invasion of "Iraq," inviting viewers to offer their remembrances and observations. I had this to offer:

"I thought the war could be stopped. I had joined a group called Veterans for Peace, and was confident that the nationwide effort would deter Bush and his criminal enterprise.

I was naive. I actually believed these people cared about such things as morality and ethics, decency and respect for human life. They cared about none of these things. What they cared about was empire, profits for their friends, and exercise of power.

We will be reaping the whirlwind for this war for many years to come. The death, destruction and ruined lives are bad enough. The worst part is the lowering of our standards as a people. As we are seeing on a daily basis, a continued lowering of standards at the top filters down to the rest of the culture with a vengeance. Now that we are winding down our killing overseas, we are killing each other at a feverish pace.

One final legacy of the war is the enshrinement of presidential impunity. If a president can lie a country into war, he can do anything. Anything, that is, except run afoul of Wall Street."

There isn't much more that can be said. Salon has a few posts that shed a bit of light. Donald Rumsfeld, former Defense Secretary, apparently Tweeted that people should be thankful for the invasion. He got plenty of replies. Read about it here. Another post observes how the news media are attempting to rewrite history. Finally, there is the open letter to Bush and Cheney from a dying "Iraq" war veteran.
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R.I.P. Alvin Lee. His performance at Woodstock is the stuff of legend.