When It Hurts To Say, "I Told You So"
by Mary Pitt
It is well and good to be proven right in most circumstances, but there are times when being proven right brings great
pain. The predicament in which we now find our once-glorious nation is one of these. Millions of people from all over
the world marched in the streets in warning against launching war against nations in the pursuit of a small band of
international, radically-religious criminals. While all grieved the loss of life in the cowardly attack on the World
Trade center, many foresaw the over-reaction of President George W. Bush as the opening of a giant Pandora's Box that
would unleash unspeakable evil on the world. Now those millions of people can only stand helplessly by as their
predictions continue to prove out.
Those of us whose memories span decades were aware of the events of history. We do recall the results of previous
invasions of Middle Eastern nations and the eventual outcomes. In the case of Afghanistan specifically, there have been
many conquests of this isolated area of the world and none of them have been successful over the long term. As a matter
of fact, we warned, our connection with Usama bin Laden began when we trained him and his band of merry men to assist
the Afghans against the invading Russians, who failed miserably to prevail over the rugged terrain and the
even-more-durable Afghan way of life.
But invade we did. We "liberated" the people of Afghanistan amid all the hoopla about establishing democracy and
improving the lives of all citizens therein, especially the downtrodden women who would at long last be freed from their
veils and their seclusion. We "took control" of that sad nation, establishing an occupation of all the vital territory;
we installed a former oil company employee as the President with the approval of the ruling warlords, and we called it a
democracy. Meanwhile, Usama and many of his men escaped into the mountains and were all but forgotten as we had other
fish to fry and other nations in our "axis of evil" in which to establish our version of democracy.
With a reduced force in-country, maintaining the peace and attempting to find the "bad guys", Afghanistan returned to
the normal routine. The fields were plowed and the poppies were planted and grew into a bumper crop. Last year 75% of
the world's opium supply was produced by the Afghan people under the direction of the warlords and sold on the world
market by the Taliban while the President of Afghanistan is barricaded in his palace by fear of assassination. The
warlords are still in control on the local level and their brutal rules of "justice" are still in place. Women are still
sold into marriages where abuse by the husband's family still becomes so unbearable that more and more are turning to
self-immolation to escape it. Except in the city, women are still closely veiled and politically impotent. Afghan life
has returned to normal despite the presence of the foreigners.
Meanwhile, against the will of the people, our troops were sent into Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction which
were not there. We implemented the desired "regime change" and declared "Mission Accomplished". We installed the
expatriot, Ahmed Chalabi, as temporary leader only to have to remove him due to accusations that he was dealing with
Iran and providing covert information to that potential adversary. A hasty "election" by leaders of the various
religious factions led to the designation of Iyad Allawi as temporary president until "full and free" elections could be
held.
Some of the long-sighted Cassandras had been warning from the beginning that Saddam had been weakened by the United
Nations sanctions and the U.N. inspectors insisted that the "weapons of mass destruction", (which we had provided to
Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran War), had been destroyed or had deteriorated with age and were no longer a factor.
However, President Bush persisted in his quest for a reason to invade, based on a personal vendetta against Saddam
because "He tried to kill my dad!" However, some were able to see that the conquest of this ancient civilization would
not be so easy. We recalled the warning issued by Saddam some years before; (to paraphrase), "We will give them the
desert.....and then we will fight them in the streets and alleyways in our cities, and we will prevail." This has been
proven to be true, despite the fact that Saddam is rotting in an American prison.
Over the ages, many nations have invaded the Middle East, most in Holy Wars, Crusades, or in attempts to gain control of
the natural resources. To date, none have succeeded. Great Britain held the lands as a protectorate for some time, but
was never able to implement any real reform of the government. Their "protection" was largely limited to preventing the
indigenous populations from killing each other. As the time came to relinquish this tenuous control of the whole area of
Mesopotamia, Iraq, which contained the most contentious religious factions was deliberately drawn to control them and to
prevent their spread to other areas. A brutal dictatorship was set up to govern on the premise that they could not be
controlled otherwise. Thus the rise of Saddam Hussein.
After the conclusion of the Gulf War, when many wanted the United States to invade and conquer Iraq, upon the good
advice of some wise people, President George H.W. Bush decided that the nation would be ungovernable without Saddam and
he declined to follow up on the victory that had been won in Kuwait. The same advisors and the same advice were
available to President George W. Bush, but he preferred to listen to the multinational corporations who whispered dreams
of controlling the Iraqi oil in the ears of an ambitious man. It would be easy, said the whisperers, to get rid of a
weakened Saddam, destroy the opposition, and install a friendly government with whom to contract for all the lovely oil.
The people of Iraq were said to be waitng to greet us with flowers and cheers. We were, in fact, greeted with signs of
"thumbs up" which, we soon learned, were not the Iraqi signal for "A-okay" but were similar to a familiar American
one-finger salute.
Our children are still engaged in a horrific guerilla war and dying at the hands of the very "resistance" of which
Saddam warned. The "insurgents" are fighting them door-to-door in the streets of one city after another and returning to
cities that have already been "taken" to fight again. Our young men have themselves become prisoners, being held far
beyond their military commitments while the President refuses to institute a draft to gain replacements for fear of
arousing the electorate. Well over a thousand American soldiers have died, thousands more maimed, and many thousands of
Iraqi civilians have become the victims of our bombs and bullets, but there is no end in sight.
We have been led into a war which, as many have foreseen, cannot be won, cannot be quit, and can only be disastrous as
our nation goes into financial melt-down and this administration mortgages our future for generations to pay the
enormous debt that this ill-thought-out war will cost. In addition, our place in the world financial markets is in grave
danger as our trade balance bottoms out, our national debt to foreign nations balloons, and our reputation as "leader of
the free world" is negated.
Being able to say, "I told you so", is small compenastion for the pain of seeing how far our great nation has fallen in
only four years and the apprehension at what will likely happen to us all in the next four years. GOD SAVE THE USA!
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Mary Pitt is a septuagenarian Kansan who is self-employed and active in the political arena. Her concerns are her
four-generation family and the continuance of the United States as a democracy with a government "of the people, by the
people, and for the people". Comments and criticism may be addressed to mpitt@cox.net .