Five years later, we are still self-righteous

Wednesday will mark the fifth anniversary of the start of the United States’ bombing of Baghdad, the first step in a war effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power and, ostensibly, to bring democracy to the Iraqi people.

It is nearly impossible to look back at the first few days of the war given the petty and insular partisanship that has engulfed this country. After all, if one were to rely on the information coming out of American news organizations, one would lose all sense of perspective and concern for the fragility of the Iraqi society and the welfare of millions of Iraqi civilians. (The American media outlets have even distorted the term “civilian,” no doubt to protect the collective American conscience so nobody at home thinks our military is killing too many “innocent people” over there.)

However, one must look back at what transpired during the first day of bombing in Iraq and remember the American mentality about the upcoming war in order to fully understand how this country has changed over the last five years and, more importantly, how it has not.

A nice place to start is Sunday’s New York Times, with John F. Burns’ reflection piece, “Five Years.” Burns, the Baghdad bureau chief for The Times in 2003, recounts the feeling after the first bombs landed on Hussein’s compound in southwest Baghdad at 9 p.m. local time on March 19, 2003. Burns wrote: “At precisely that moment ““ not a few seconds early, or late ““ the first cruise missile struck the vast, bunker-like presidential command complex in what would become, under the American occupation, the Green Zone. … In Washington, they called it “˜shock and awe.’ In Baghdad, Iraqis yearning for their liberation from Saddam called it, simply, “˜the air show.'”

Burns paints a surreal image of the war. For the Americans, it was never much more than an experiment to see how the politics of the Middle East might be redrawn to solve the problems of rising oil prices in a post-Sept. 11 environment. It is politically fashionable for most Americans to distance themselves from the egregious mistakes made by the Bush administration. The reality is that this catastrophic war could not have been waged without the complicity and fear of the American people. Sure, the White House fed Americans lies, but the media sounded the drumbeat for war, and everyone bought it. Revisionism in this country says that everyone in the world originally supported the “vote to authorize the war” ““ which Democrats now claim is somehow different than supporting the war itself. Of course, “the world” didn’t seem to represent anybody outside of the U.S. or Great Britain.

Therefore, it should not be surprising that even Burns, one of the most seasoned and respected journalists at the “liberal” New York Times, has fallen into that appallingly self-absorbed line of thinking about the war and why it was doomed to fail. Burns wrote: “In time, those who launched the war will answer in history. … But reporters, too, may wish to make an accounting. … We have to acknowledge that we were less effective, then, in probing beneath the carapace of terror to uncover other facets of Iraq’s culture and history that would have a determining impact on the American project to build a Western-style democracy, or at least the basics of a civil society.”

Burns echoes a popular sentiment, which goes something like this: Maybe it was wrong to overthrow Hussein, though he was a brutal dictator, but it is ultimately the Iraqis’ fault. These days, most Democrats like to say that America has built a culture of dependency and the Iraqis have not stood up to the challenge.

This nonsupport, nondenunciation of the war has pervaded nearly every corner of mainstream American thought, and it is as asinine as the rationale for invading Iraq five years ago.

It would be nice to think that after the disastrous effects of the Iraq War and the irreparable violence and chaos inflicted upon the Iraqi people, America was not nearly as myopic or self-aggrandizing as it had been before the invasion. Unfortunately, we haven’t learned that much. We’re just as self-righteous as ever.

But never mind all that ““ what about Barack Obama’s pastor?

E-mail de Jong at adejong@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.

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