Guess What? It's Sack-Cloth and Ashes Time in the U S of A

Many of our politicians have recently discovered that the Iraq war is unpopular. Some have even made the decision (a political calculation) to oppose the war. To cover themselves--especially if they were in Congress in 2002-2003 and supported the invasion--those who have turned to the side of the angels now claim that they were "misled" by the Bush Administration's "evidence" against the government of Saddam Hussein.

No one who actually looked at that evidence--at least what was made publicly available at the time--and was sober, could have found it in the least bit compelling. And there is no reason to believe that the Bush Administration saved the "really good" evidence for private Congressional consumption.

The anti-war movement is also sounding and repeating the "We were lied to" theme. In other words, we are VICTIMS.

The truth is, we are not victims of the Bush Administration's crafty malevolent ways. Which is not to say that the ways of the Bush Administration are free from craft and malevolence--far from it. Craft and malevolence is the Bush Administration's stock-in-trade. My question is: Who didn't know that?

Here's the deep, dark, ugly truth. On the eve of the Bush Administration's illegal, unjust, and immoral invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq, American public opinion supported the war. Indeed, according to pollsters at the Pew Research Center, in March 2003, 71% of the Americans sampled believed that to invade Iraq was the "right decision." 22% believed it was the "wrong decision." 7% were undecided.

The truth is: deep down inside, 71% of Americans in March 2003 thrilled at the proposition of sending the world's most lethal military force to wreak havoc in an Arab and predominately Muslim country. The truth is: until 78% of the American public owns up to its culpability ("undecided" does not cut it with me) for the invasion of Iraq, there will be no peace, no justice, no chance to right the wrongs that we have done to the Iraqi people and to our own country, to ourselves, and to much of the world.

The Myth of American Exceptionalism is the enemy that needs defeating. Let's change our way of thinking, make ourselves a different set of rules.