Thursday, June 12, 2014

Iraq bearing the fruits of Bush/Cheney invasion

As al-Qaida inspired militants capture key cities in Iraq and threaten to march on Baghdad, the disastrous legacy of Bush and Cheney’s illegal invasion of that country in 2003 becomes horribly apparent. Militant Islamist groups rose from the chaos of post-war Iraq, intent on taking advantage of the vacuum to control territory and impose their radical religious views on the previously secular country.

Our blundering, ill-conceived assault on a country that had no ties to terrorism has created a fertile breeding ground for extremists and potential terrorists. The Plan for a New American Century crafted by neocons in the late nineties and then used as the basis for the Bush administration's Middle East policies was a blueprint for disaster, an ideological veneer thinly covering a belief that the oil rich countries of that region must be under our government’s thumb and the oil fields under the control of American companies.

It was a plan grounded on hubris and greed destined for failure. And yet, no one has paid a price for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, for sending Americans to be killed in a war based on false pretenses or for destabilizing an already volatile part of the world. If there were justice, George Bush should be painting portraits of his cellmate, Dick Cheney.

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