Feel guilt. Then move on

[ze_dscherman]

Those who supported the war because of Bush and Blair's lies now cast themselves as victims. This won't help Iraq's dead and dying

Naomi Klein
Friday February 20, 2004
The Guardian

It was Mary Vargas, a 44-year-old engineer in Renton, Washington, who carried US therapy culture to its new zenith. Explaining why the war in Iraq was no longer her top election issue, she told Salon, the online magazine, that "when they didn't find the weapons of mass destruction, I felt I could also focus on other things. I got validated".

Yes, that's right: war opposition as self-help. The end-goal is not to seek justice for the victims, or punishment for the aggressors, but rather "validation" for one's position. Once validated, one can reach for the talisman of self-help: "closure". In Britain, it's Blair who adopted the language of self-help: validated by the Hutton whitewash, he is urging the nation to "draw a line" and "move on".

In the US, it's the Democrats who have the therapy market cornered.

SNIP

Why does this history matter? Because so long as Bush's opponents cast themselves as the primary victims of his war, the real victims will remain invisible. The focus will be on uncovering Bush and Blair's lies - a process geared towards absolving those who believed them, not on compensating those who died because of them.

In the five stages of grieving, there is a step that comes after anger. It's guilt, when the grieving party starts to wonder whether they did enough, if the loss was somehow their fault, how they can make amends. Moving on - the final stage - is supposed to come after that reckoning.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1152089,00.html

[T_i_B]

1. Not a good article

Those who supported the war because of Bush and Blair's lies do not have to move on so much admit they made a mistake and were mislead as well as joining with those of us holding the madmen in authority to account. It is possible for people to admit they are wrong Ms Klein and we should welcome those who do. Even if those who were lied to were not the primary victims they did fall victim to a small extent.

PS, regarding the Iraqi deaths, may I remind Ms Klein that the US presidential candidates are talking to US voters, not Iraqi's. It may be an obscenity to Ms Klein to talk about the Iraq war in terms of military casualties and US tax dollars but this stuff does matter and it is one more way of showing people that this adventure was a mistake.

[Atman]

2. Where has my country gone?

I thought the article was kind of fascinating, but way depressing. Now, I am not saying I want uprisings in the streets, or life thrown into turmoil in general. But it really troubles me, this call for "closure." Fuck closure. It is what the GOP has relied upon every single time...a right-wing preacher gets caught with hooker and it's just "boo hoo! I was led astray! Let's all move on 'cuz I'm a better person now!" and we do. It worked with Bush for the CIA leak. For the Cheney Papers. For AWOL (at least the first time around). Even now, the only reason we aren't supposed to discuss Bush's guard service isn't due to the doubts about its veracity as much as we hear "it was thirty years ago!"

SO WHAT!? If we've learned anything, repeatedly letting a criminal get away with his crimes only emboldens him. So thirty years ago, Bush was a lying, irresponsible dolt. No one has once bitch-slapped and put him in his place, pointed out to him that he was WRONG, so he just get bolder and bolder which each ensuing folly. Until he gets so ridiculously over-inflated that he has no compunction about sending American men and women to their deaths for his personal agenda.

We need to stop seeking closure, banish it outright in political terms. Political closure can only be jail time or exoneration. When we "move on" after the president commits such gross misconduct, when we "move on" after allowing Dick Cheney to reap obscene profits from the government he is supposed to serve, while ducking court orders to release documentation of the public's business, that is when we've moved on from our democracy, and into something else entirely.

I don't plan on seeking closure, unless it the kind that results from the White House door hitting Bush in the ass on his way out.