US Responsibility

Hubert Van Es/United Press International/Corbis Bettmann

The United States Congress should immediately begin formulating legislation to eliminate quotas for Iraqi refugees. It's the least the US can do for the people who have been victimized by the stupidest foreign policy in US history. The invasion of Iraq is the brainchild of people who understand as much about modern US history as George W. Bush:

"The enemy who attacked us despises freedom, and harbors resentment at the slights he believes America and Western nations have inflicted on his people. He fights to establish his rule over an entire region. And over time, he turns to a strategy of suicide attacks destined to create so much carnage that the American people will tire of the violence and give up the fight.

If this story sounds familiar, it is -- except for one thing. The enemy I have just described is not al Qaeda, and the attack is not 9/11, and the empire is not the radical caliphate envisioned by Osama bin Laden. Instead, what I've described is the war machine of Imperial Japan in the 1940s, its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and its attempt to impose its empire throughout East Asia."

This idiotic comparison is so defective that it lands off the chart. The Administration will stop at nothing to try to salvage something, anything, out of the wreck they have made of Iraq. No deceit is too outrageous. So now the chaos and total corruption that have intensified every month since the Spring of 2003 are to be equated with Imperial Japan and Pearl Harbor. Amnesia is a wonderful resource for demagogues.

The goal of current US policy in the Middle East is very simple: delay the bloodiest consequences of the invasion of Iraq until after January 2009. At that point the Young Republicans and the Evangelists can leave the Green Zone (see illustration above) and the people who thought up this debacle can blame the whole catastrophe on their successors.