Hey. You okay? Of course you are. Just thought I should ask. How the fuck did we get here? I thought this country would come together after the past few years of turmoil. At least a majority of it. Oh well. Everything seemed okay at Target earlier today. I think most people are distracting themselves with the holiday season stuff and all. Maybe that's the true purpose of Christmas nowadays. Not meaning to be disrespectful towards any religious beliefs you may have but the Christian spirit doesn't really drive those commercial transactions. Besides, most scholars think Jesus was most likely born in the late summer or early fall and the Romans merged it with the big winter solstice festivities beings it was such a dark time already that could use a little pep. Could depend on whether fall starts after labor day, football season, a particular trout spawning, the elk rut, or the official calendar date for you. No reason for all that to dampen the season though. Christmas is great for all kinds of people as long as the extremes don't quibble over inconsequential details.
For the record, I would never bring all this up if invited over for Christmas dinner at your's or anyone else's house to celebrate during this time of year. Or even if it's leftovers over the following week. I'll sit there and smile even if your Dad is needling me over over my belief system. I would simply change the subject to Syria. A neighborhood where he knows he has to walk a little more careful around corners.
You know, fuck all this. Let's get out of the country for a while. Not from fear of prosecution or anything. Just for something a little different. We could maybe do France. The first few weeks would be just walking around getting coffee and wine. Then we could do some kind of talk show. We'll fuck with Macron and Le Pen equally. The French won't know what to think. Especially as we solve their problems with all the train strikes by simply raising the price for tickets while giving locals a secret punch card they can redeem for free shit or a set of clues to find a really awesome hidden prize. The rest of the show would primarily be about sports. College football mostly. We could do some hunting and fishing talk too or any other topics which pique your curiosity. Reviewing coffee shops and wine bars could even be one of the main themes.
All that could pay the bills and fill the void until we figure out what the fuck happened the past four years. You could say five but then we'd have to factor in all the covid stuff and I'm not sure I have the juice for all that right now. Needless to say, I think you did a marvelous job over the past four years. Not sure what else you could have done. Some people will point out that you basically did the same thing as all the Democrats which is true to an extent. You also didn't do or say any of the dumb stuff they did. You focused on what was the most pressing issue before the American people. Which was pretty easy to see. The Republican candidate for president attempted a coup less than four years ago. Not sure if it was because of podcasters, fake news, foreign intelligence agencies hijacking social media or stupidity but a whole lotta people were not bothered by things such as insurrection and the subversion of our democracy as they entered the voting booth.
The majority of a whole lotta those people used to yours. Republicans basically. They ditched your ass with a quickness not often seen outside of a right wing reaction to a wide airport toilet stance. The fact that Trump had already managed to discredit the neocon movement from 20 years ago helped set the stage. Iraq was a terrible mess. We should probably talk this out before embarking on any drastic move. I'm not doing it to rub anybody's nose in anything either. It may be more relevant to our current pickle than most think.
I don't doubt your Dad and his buddies probably thought that taking out Saddam and installing a more suave actor to play the role of Shah over Iraq would help the USA and perhaps stabilize the Middle East. Somebody with a sense of humor would have been a good call. And they would have needed to set up a scene where he beats the shit out of al-Zarqawi in a sprawling street fight. After drugging al-Zarqawi first. But they left out a crucial part of this plan and left quite the vacuum.
Though everyone would have been doing a whole lot of backslapping if the vacuum would have been properly filled, I would still have to make an argument against the removal of a despot from outside force who is not posing an immediate threat mainly because there's too many of them fuckers. Makes those fuckers a little itchy to get a nuke to make sure it don't happen too. The only chance for a legit justification for the invasion would have been to discover an Acme rocket kit with a built in plutonium holding chamber in an underground lair accompanied by a map showing Iraq with a dotted line landing within a crudely drawn USA with a mushroom cloud along with a detailed realistic plan to acquire the plutonium within a few months.
Instead, the boys and girls in the bully pulpit used fear to get the American people behind the war machine. It even seems most of the pre-war planning revolved around this instead of actual war planning. I'll be careful here but the lead up to the Iraq War is when I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Now I know the Bush administration was nowhere close to the Turd Reich but the use of fear to justify a little war kept popping up for me during this time period. I can't help but wonder if it is easier to use fear on a group due to a pre-existing pathway. Is this pathway being used today as well?
Since we're already deep in the throughs of hindsight I'd like to go back a little further to the same place and with many of same people with some similar names. Iraq War I. The Kuwait War is actually closer to the core but those smart bombs were going through doors and windows in Baghdad. Nothing but the environmental disaster of burning oil fields in Kuwait which would had led to much lower TV ratings.
Let's go to the point where George I told the Shiites and Kurds to rise up against Saddam. All we had to do was offer support from the perimeter and fire a few more smart bombs at Saddam's heavy equipment. Things may have been a little messy but it was a chance to finish the job the right way. We had a good reason to let it play out. It may have led to a better Middle East. Maybe they would have trusted us more to help with the Palestinian situation before the brink. Maybe the Wahhabis would have been considered out of touch douchebags and bin Laden would have had to get a job as a golf pro once his funding ran out. Maybe some of Charlie Wilson's old friends could have made some inroads in Kabul after witnessing the stabilization in Iraq. But we decided to go home with the easy win. At least we got an opportunity to grease ourselves down and flex for the post Soviet world. And boy did our cock look huge in that USA flag speedo.
Sorry about that last part but you saw it too. Up close to boot. There's several leaps in there too. No telling how the best of intentions can end up in the Middle East. I can't help but wonder if we have ever really attempted to implement an even somewhat benevolent plan when engaging with this region. I know a country has to have their own interests in mind but we seem to ignore the normal mutual respect due to allies in this part of the world. Which could also leave a hole in the soul of the people who risked their lives to serve.
Getting back to more recent hindsight, your switch to the Democratic side didn't really seem to make waves. Liberals still seem pretty pissed at you for some of the stuff mentioned above. I wish they would have put their differences aside and acted a little more mature like myself since we were staring down an insurrectionist and all. Not sure how many conservatives you pulled off the Trump train. Many of them may have mumbled something about being pissed about Iraq too but I doubt any of them really put any critical thought into it. Or about the same amount of critical thought as they did a little over 20 years ago when they were waving the same flag as they are now.
A little side note here. I visited my homeland, south Georgia, around the time of the 2004 election. The election signs in yards were predominantly of two major themes. Put the 10 Commandments in courthouses and put the rebel flag back in the state flag. There was no questioning of the wisdom of partaking in the Iraq war in south Georgia at this time or at any later time. The 2004 election was the first one I was personally invested. I wouldn't say I was exactly a huge fan of Mr. Kerry but I was pulling for him with everything I had. Though I believe 2024 will be much more consequential for our country, 2004 may have hurt a little worse at the time. I guess the first cut in the deepest. Are you Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart or Sheryl Crow here? I'm Rod Stewart.
Getting those conservative voters back will be important but I'm not sure what the initial steps should be for such a preoccupied group. An in depth complex outreach may fall on deaf ears with the current various megaphones pounding the brains of your former constituents with knee-jerk takes. There's another group you could address directly though. Winning them back could even bring the others along. I'm speaking of the soldiers who put their lives on pause and risked their lives for the strategies of the Bush / Cheney regime.
At this point in time most educated people of the world would agree that the decisions which led to the US invasion of Iraq were flawed and the execution of the war was poor. I have it down as an unnecessary war. I do not know how most soldiers view it. I also understand the revulsion some might feel at hearing someone call something where they lost friends, limbs, mental capabilities and health to as unnecessary.
You may have a different point of view. You may have a better perspective to offer the soldiers. Your past positions could bring about difficulties. But I can't think of anyone else is this country of ours who would be more suited to take on this most difficult but necessary mission.
You see, military types hate people like myself who are against a war they may have participated in or approved of. Even though we were never against the troops or blew up any government buildings, we were cast as being for the enemies of the USA. I'm not here to fight this point in these current times. Just showing why none of us peaceniks can bridge this gap. I mean other than the 2008 election, not many people formerly for the war voted for the Democrats. And that election was more than simply a referendum on the Iraq War. I also realize many Democrats inside the circle of power were all for the war before it became a political liability. The combination of mistrust of Obama and the Tea Party surge united the old Republicans with the upstart conservative radicals without ever having to address any of the former wounds.
Then came Trump. He called out the mistakes from Iraq as only a Republican could without facing any backlash from the voters or soldiers. He got it right too. But as I had mentioned earlier, most people agreed the war was wrong at this point. Trump also used this as a moment of national healing. Just teasing. He rolled it up to whack Jeb Bush on the head. Like many of the country's other wounds, this one was left to fester.
The stories an outsider hears about soldiers returning from Iraq paint a picture of those who believe the war was a holy endeavor ranging to those racked by grief and shame with most existing somewhere in between. One can easily see why the brass is loath to ever let the rank and file believe a war was unnecessary after all the sacrifices. However, once the mistakes become self evident, I think it becomes necessary for a responsible leader to step up and have a talk with the troops. It could even start as a series of one on one conversations. As difficult as this might be, losing them to darkness is worse and is a likely outcome if no action is taken. The darkness may be a lust for war for war's sake or a pit of despair. Most people crave honesty.
There was a handful of veterans storming the US Capitol on January 6th. Many of those probably served in the War on Terror. A little ironic, I know. Especially if it turns out Hezbollah was pulling the strings. I don't doubt that every organization and state actor hoping for the USA to collapse was working the social media complex between the election and this oh so terrible day. Russian fingerprints were probably the most prevalent. It was also probably the day Putin and Prigozhin lit a cigar underneath their little "Mission Accomplished" banner hanging in whomever's man cave they happened to be in that day. A handful of Americans took turns manning the Kremlim's rickshaw at this point.
I have no doubt some of those veterans from J6 could be fine people back in their normal lives but on this day they were simply insurrectionists. They knew the score. The fact they were there held a certain credence for the boys down on the corner and hanging off the Capitol. Made it more legit even if they weren't the true instigators. Though he provided no proof, Trump got the crew down to DC by telling them something evil was afoot. Much like a shepherd to his lost sheep. 62 court cases filed. A few votes in the Keystone state were tossed but not enough to change anything. A man batting 1 for 62 usually doesn't make the cut. History will keep coming back to here for Trump too.
Whether one was at the Capitol to be accelerant for the next civil war or was duped into thinking the election was stolen by Trump, Fox News or social media, these people represented the worst of America. Civil war mongering and being violently gullible are terrible American qualities in my humble opinion. Some of these Americans showed remorse for their actions afterwards. Some of it could have been for the benefit of the sentencing judge but it was something. With pardons looming, the Trump Troopers are emboldened. Many of the apologists are withdrawing their premature apologies all for the glory of being referred to as a Patriot for the next four years.
I'm not sure this will have the sticking power of the Lost Cause Confederates of our only Civil War. It turned around a little quicker back then with the assassination of a sitting president. It seems like that would have had the opposite effect. The Confederates benefitted from the "all soldiers are heroes" philosophy which still dominates our culture today. I know you don't think Confederate soldiers are heroes. You got some strong Yankee blood running through those veins of yours. I'm with you on this one too. Funny how Confederate and Rebel soldier sounds somewhat regal and cool while Yankee sounds more like a slur. Union just sounds bland.
How can US citizens reconcile the country's use of soldiers in unnecessary wars and their treatment when compared to engagements such as WW II? All of the soldiers are definitely brave and unselfish to risk their lives to answer the call of their government. They deserve to treated right at the conclusion of any foreign engagement as well. Which I'm not sure if they have been. I know term is antiquated but I feel many of our more recent wars have been fought for the benefit of the military / industrial / congressional complex as opposed to the benefit of the American people. Yet, much of the after war veteran support was outsourced to the American people. I understand there's the VA and GI Bill but I feel the government expects the US citizens to employ, lionize, support and treat. I truly believe someone should be doing this for the soldiers. The boards of Halliburton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon should be picking up these tabs. Maybe passing around the bucket at the next corporate retreat.
I think any soldier who has participated in combat should be taken care of for life. Not only medical care but housing and a guaranteed cushy job. Many vets would be able to take care of themselves. Some may just need temporary help. Others may be broken in ways only other soldiers can comprehend. Perhaps they could be given construction jobs for building houses for other vets. They may need to have about six months vacation per year but I think a US military construction company could comply. I bet government contractors wouldn't mind paying a nominal fee (percentage wise) to support something like this. All we would need at this point is a real estate mogul CEO type person to make it happen.
I don't blame any veterans for being pissed at their treatment after whatever level of service they partook in the past few decades. WW II was little different If you were white. I guessing it had something to do with the whole country being invested in the war effort as opposed to being told to go about their lives as it was in subsequent conflicts. Which leaves the populace with ample time to debate the necessity of said conflict. Like clockwork, those who question the validity of a war are pitted against the troops.
Now we have a certain number of soldiers who think if it's okay to topple a foreign government, why not our own? Especially since the Commander-in-Chief along with some brass gave it a big thumbs up. Me and you both know who the main culprit was. You were part of a somewhat thorough investigation a little while back. Any idea why the military didn't investigate their own for the little insurrection. The military is known for being able to streamline when faced with dire circumstances. Seems like a military tribunal would have been appropriate for both active duty and retired soldiers involved in the lead up as well as the events on January 6th. The American deserved to know whether it's kosher to ignore the chain of command to rally behind the lunacy of a lame duck president.
A few examples may have done the trick. I'm thinking General Michael Flynn and perhaps Major Pete Hegseth. Most say these two men served our country admirably during the Iraq War. Should they be allowed to engage in insurrection afterwards with no consequences? I don't think so. I still think they should be given housing and a job just in prison if they were to be found guilty in the tribunal. Now Flynn was knee deep in all of this. Pete was more of a propaganda cheerleader doing his pom pom routine on Fox News so he might have been able to slide. I wonder what would have happened if Major Pete had his National Guard Company at the Capitol on Insurrection Day. At least he was flagged before the Inauguration.
The problem we have here Liz is that many soldiers and vets may idolize Mike and Pete now much in the same way as Confederate officers were idolized so may years ago. Probably not much you could do to reach these souls. Some soldiers and vets have been squarely on your side for the past few years. But there could be a silent majority who are caught in between. Many may have voted for Trump this past election mostly because they always vote Republican anyway but they may not be fully sold on this new authoritarian billionaire wing of the party.
Pulling this silent majority of vets back could be the key to saving what is left of your old party. I think that may be the only route at this juncture. I heard you mention forming a third party at one point which under normal circumstances I would love. But you may be abandoning the sane Republicans to the dark side without pulling any your way due to their fear of being primaried by Elon's money.
I don't feel this country has ever had a true conversation with its veterans over how things may have gone south on their particular tour. There was really no need for one after WW II. Vietnam left us shattered in ways which still affect the country. It's probably too late to reconcile that one. Especially since almost all of the leaders from that era have past.
It would be revolutionary if you were to start a conversation with Iraq War Vets. I think they would listen to you too. I'm in no way asking for to throw your Dad and the rest of the gang under the bus either. To err is human as they say. My past mistakes rip me apart every so often. I have to believe many people feel the same about their's. Forced to stare in the distance when distractions fade. Attempting to be present but can't quite make it. It could even be due to a partial error which fate turns into something bigger. It happens to the best of us. Egos should be put aside to help those that we can.
You could probably get that Kinzinger fella to help you out. Pretty sure he doesn't have a job right now. You could even grab some Democrats who served. Make it bipartisan. Don't forget, many Democrats were all gung ho at first too. I haven't forgotten. This group of veterans needs to be pulled back into the fold. We can't afford to lose them to Trump. Or Major Pete. The drunkest officer at the tittie bar just might be the most popular. And there may not be anyone to pull him off when he gets on stage now. Hopefully someone will get it on camera if it does happen again.
Though I disagree with the initial decisions for invading Iraq, there was a chance things could have worked out better than they did. You could focus on the mistakes shared by many. Such as the execution of Saddam. It wasn't as bad as Gaddafi's execution but it may have ratcheted up the bloodlust. Russia would have probably given him a shitty home. Sending all the guys with military experience home with nothing to do except listen to the Imams and local talk radio yucks bitch about the unfolding events was questionable. Some thoughts on the wisdom of using Blackwater could be broached. Not sure what could have been done differently after the Abu Ghraib pictures came out. Those made us look like quite the bastards.
I fear the Iraq War became a modern day Crusade for some Christian soldiers. It's one of the only justifications which still holds up for many in this group. I have a theory that many of the soldiers at the Capitol on January 6th belong to the before mentioned ranks. Some are still in positions of power with the possibility of other like minded souls to be joining them soon. We don't stand a chance if our military goes dark. The philosophies espoused by the leaders of this Christian Nationalist group through their various books and podcast diatribes seem to point to turning the forces used in the Middle East within our own borders. And sure, it will start with immigrants but the true targets seem to be the people attempting to stand in the path of the new crusade of MAGA ascension. I for one do not need for my dick to be pointed and laughed at right there in my face. No one needs that.
I do not think Iraq vets are the main culprit behind this push. I believe it is a few bad apples and Mr. Trump. (And we can still call him that for a few more days. Do you think Trump has been shaping his foreign policy based on a rather intense game of Risk? I do.) It's vital this group gets pulled back into the fold of what this country is supposed to be. It will help them and possibly save the country. Veterans hold a sway over this country like no other group. The Vietnam protesters were spinning their wheels before the vets joined up with them. Others will follow their lead. And Liz, I think you are in a unique position to bring this together and get your people back.
I apologize for this turning into a lecture. It wasn't my initial plan. It's a bit of a hot mess even by my standards. It started as a breezy little Christmas piece. Things have been moving a little slow for me the past few months. My wheels have also been turning for quite some time about doing some kind of Iraq War article and I guess some of it got squeezed in here. I debated on cutting most of it out but I think it shows something important. The willingness to unite and work with people you may have a rather large disagreement with for a greater cause. The damage done to our system between election day 2020 and January 6, 2021 was immense. Though it is looking dark, I think we can still fix it. I'm willing to work hand in hand with people who may hate me. I hope you feel the same and I think you do.
I'm not sure if you could have done anything differently over the past few years. I wish the Democrats would have brought you in a little earlier to come up with a strategy for winning over moderate / conservative women. Should have been easy this election cycle. They just used you as window dressing instead. I would have done things differently if I was a high powered campaign consultant. We would have had long conversations lasting into the wee hours of the night about real stuff. I would have done my best to show you how much I respect what you did for the country. I still feel that way. But there's work to do now. Maybe there will be a time somewhere down this dusty old road for us to pull over and take a breath.
I understand if you think this isn't a great idea. We don't have to do France. We could go somewhere warm if you like. It could be a long weekend too if you're busy. The talk show could be a one time thing where we skewer the inauguration. Or just football. Some big games are coming up. Either way, hang in there. Nobody's giving up on this. Nobody important anyway.
Mack Yaun
The Mackeson Institute
An Extreme Moderate Think Tank