Congress Should Have Given As Much Attention To Iraq As Benghazi.

Congress has spent far more time debating and analyzing the events at Benghazi than it did the invasion of Iraq. The results of the terrorist attacks on the US Consulate in Benghazi resulted in the tragic deaths of four Americans. While the cavalier invasion of Iraq led to the deaths of 4,486 US soldiers and, by at least one authoritative estimate, the deaths of more than a million Iraqis. The invasion of Iraq was based on false pretenses while the concern over Benghazi is that the White House falsely stated the cause of the attacks.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Benghazi has been investigated, analyzed and politicized to death. And the GOP is still out for blood. They want someone, anyone, to pay. They already derailed the nomination of Susan Rice for Secretary of State for merely stating what she believed to be true. And every investigation has proven that her remarks were accurate. But the GOP wants to hang Benghazi around the necks of President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. There is talk of impeachment and the everlasting hope that further investigations of Benghazi will prevent Hillary from running for president in 2016. There is also the very real likelihood that another sensationalized kangaroo investigation of Benghazi will help the GOP capture the Senate in the mid-term elections.

Yet, the many falsehoods and lies that led to the invasion of Iraq have scarcely been investigated. No one involved in the lies at any level has paid a price. Only recently has the Senate investigated the accusations of Bush-sanctioned secret prisons and torture! In an attempt to heal the wounds caused by that costly and unnecessary war, President Obama chose not to pursue investigations and sanctions against the pepetrators of the lies, even though there is clear evidence that the Bush administration lied about the existence of WMD (weapons of mass destruction), sanctioned torture, and punished anyone who stood in their way, going so far as to commit treason by outing a clandestine CIA operative as payback for her husband’s op-ed debunking the notion that Saddam Hussein had purchased yellow cake uranium from Niger.

And what of the warnings Bush, Cheney and Condoleezza Rice received before 9/11? What of claims from numerous credible sources that the Bush administration received more than 40 detailed warnings of the impending attack? What of the single investigation led by Condoleezza Rice’s pal, Philip Zelikow, which whitewashed the lead-up to the attack and absolved Rice of wrongdoing despite obvious negligence as the National Security Advisor? What of the administration’s blatantly false claims that Saddam Hussein had partnered with al-Qaeda?

Are the American media really so stupid that they would treat the Benghazi hoax more seriously than the deception and lies behind the Iraq War and the negligence surrounding 9/11? Can the GOP be so cynical as to perpetuate the Benghazi myth for obvious political purposes? Are American voters so stupid or naive that they would believe the GOP’s disproven theory that Benghazi is worse than Watergate?

Unfortunately, I believe the answer to those questions is an unqualified yes.

The Cost Of “Wanting To Kick Some Ass.”

Our role in the Iraq War may be over, but the costs are still mounting up. According to a study by a Harvard researcher, the financial cost to the US has surpassed $4 trillion, and if the cost of care for wounded warriors is included, the overall cost could grow to as much as $6 trillion!

Yet that cost pales in comparison to the human cost. The US lost 4,486 soldiers in Iraq. Our allies lost an additional 318. And, according to a new report by Johns Hopkins University, an estimated 500,000 Iraqis died, including 200,000 who died from disease because of failed infrastructure and the fact that they couldn’t get to hospitals or doctors in order to receive treatment.

What makes these numbers even worse is that Bush’s neocon nincompoops used visions of mushroom clouds to sell this unnecessary war of choice. They claimed that the invasion would only last “a matter of days, not weeks,” that it would “pay for itself” and the Iraqis would “welcome us as liberators.” Most disturbing, an official who was inside the Bush administration said that the real reason we went to war in Iraq was that Afghanistan had been “too easy,” and after 9/11, “we wanted to kick some ass.”

The invasion of Iraq also conveniently fit Richard “The Dick” Cheney’s Plan for a New American Century which called for using our position as the world’s lone superpower to force our economic will on the world. He also called for the transformation of America’s defenses by establishing a firm military foothold in the Middle East, but warned that the process would likely be a long one, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

9/11 was just such an event.

Given the opportunity, Cheney and his fellow neocons took charge and began planning the invasion of Iraq immediately following 9/11. It made no difference that Iraq had absolutely no role in the attacks. This knowledge should weigh heavily on the conscience of every American. It should cause us to reconsider the process with which we make decisions to go to war. Such decisions should never be opportunistic. They should be the result of a careful, reasoned and agonizing debate. They should be viewed as an absolute last resort.

“Wanting to kick some ass” as a justification to go to war rightfully ranks those in the Bush administration right alongside Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi as bullies, despots and war criminals.

Despite being at war for most of our history, it seems Americans still don’t understand the consequences of war. Maybe that’s because the last war to be fought on US soil was the Civil War. For nearly 150 years, Americans have largely viewed war as something that happens to someone else. Moreover, our most recent wars have been fought by a tiny percentage of Americans.

It’s incredibly easy for people who have no real stake in combat to be war hawks…or, more accurately, chicken hawks. They want to fight…but on someone else’s land with someone else’s children. As demonstrated by the large number of deaths and the widespread destruction in Iraq, war has consequences – terrible, tragic, deadly consequences. War is rarely noble and honorable. War is ugly and bloody. Some people do extraordinarily brave things. But just as many commit awful, regrettable acts that stay with them for a lifetime.

Until we understand that, we can only dream of living in a world at peace.