The Old Ennui

We have been at war in Iraq for two years. Has ennui set in? Read what Jim McGovern, Democrat representative from Massachusetts, has to say in the May 5^th edition of The Nation.

“What worries me almost as much as our misguided policy in Iraq is that so many of my colleagues and so many citizens have become resigned to the fact that the war will go on. Congress is not being inundated with letters and phone calls and faxes and e-mails and street protests demanding an end to our presence in Iraq. President Bush's re-election seems to have taken much of the energy out of the antiwar movement. My recent visit to Iraq only strengthened my belief that this war is wrong. And only renewed, passionate dissent by the American people can end it.” (The emphasis is mine.) These comments were made after a recent visit to Iraq.

Basically, what McGovern is saying is that we’re getting a lot of bullshit from our leaders. For example:

More electricity was available in Iraq before the invasion than afterward

the World Food Program says that hunger among the Iraqi people is getting worse.

General Petraeus conceded that less than one-fourth of the 147,000 Iraqi security forces were actually "combat capable."

He questions whether, because no one seems to know how many insurgents have actually been killed, the Iraqi security forces exaggerate their own actions.

He “was told--emphatically--that there are no plans to construct military bases. Yet Congress recently passed a huge supplemental wartime appropriations bill that includes, at the request of the Bush Administration, $500 million for military base construction.”

“I couldn't get a single US official to acknowledge any mistakes. The standard line remains, "We're moving in the right direction."

“Our young men and women in uniform are performing their difficult duties extraordinarily well. Indeed, the only honest and direct responses I got from any American in Iraq were from the soldiers. They told me they had been instructed by their superiors not to share any complaints with visitors.”