One Utah

Thomas Friedman, admired by me for several decades (his wife too, and his wife continuing to be right long after Thomas went wrong), has now been consistently wrong about the Middle East since 9/11. He bats a thousand, negatively, in now warning about Iran (Salt Lake Tribune, Thursday May 3l, 2007). The drums of war? He’s been “reluctantly” supporting the Bushies and all Neocons, since 9/11: Iraq, Afghanistan (the former “the road to Jerusalem;”); yeah, sure.

A man of exquisite knowledge of Middle East history, and great physical courage, he can also tell a great story. See, his many books.

But like all imperialists and wealthy nabobs, he’s a member of my grandpa Raddon’s (Sam Raddon, Park City, founder of modern Park City a century ago, as editor for 67 years of the Park City Record) mining ventures, so to speak: he’s prostituted his knowledge, against his spouse’s better judgment, by joining Sam Raddon”s “Ore House”: gold and silver, to which Sam Raddon never belonged. Sam was satisfied to live a life of simplicity. At 12 years of age, he was a runner for the Salt Lake Tribune. By old age he was the oldest editor in tenure in the United States, 67 years as editor, taking pot shots at the wealthy and the Mormon Church (but I repeat myself), as a starchy old Episcopalian, even while writing folksy columns, Pop’s Corner, in the Park City Record about his two grandsons serving as missionaries in Scotland and England, trying with some success to make Mormons of what Sam thought were perfectly good Catholics, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians. Sam was not an imperialist. Not everyone had to think like Sam to have a place at the table.

But back to Friedman. Simplicity is not his style. Except in his great prose. His knowledge of the Middle East is prodigious. It serves him not at all. Whether blinded by his own wealth and world-wide connections to the rich and famous, or whatever. I’ve sadly written of my disagreements with a man I know, at least for a chat and a book-signing (his). I’ve not agreed with his stuff since 9/ll. Nothing except the details, the huge data he’s presented with accuracy. Except for his conclusions. As if his wife wrote the first half, and he stuck on an ass-backward conclusion.

His mistakes. He didn’t learn a thing from Vietnam. The parallel was so obvious that it reached out to this “boy in the White House” during Vietnam, that it bit me on the butt and broke my heart. From 9/12. And I said it in print. Not with his audience. But the few thousand or so that read the newspapers of the Western United States. What happened then was as obvious as a tatoo on the forehead. In December 2001. And 2002. And 2003. And 2004. And now. But like an investor who puts in $100,000.00 in real estate in a swamp, he’s supported every half-assed thing done by Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld. Now, mind, he’s convinced that they had victory in their sweaty little palms and inexplicably, let it go. Horse feathers. They had no chance once the damned fools took us into a war they premeditated and plotted and helped happen by knowing, treasonous lies. And then they malpracticed.

For Bush not only led us into a war he wanted (Oil, Daddy, power, and the balls he’s really never had, except on battleships upon which he never served, or Cheney, or Rumsfeld, or Wolfowitz); and lied to the Congress through their teeth; and to the American people. But Bush, as Commander in Chief, has almost destroyed the United States Army and the Marines, and criminally misplaced the Navy and Coast Guard by his charming combination of stupidity, ignorance, arrogance, greed, and avarice. Almost all the seven deadly sins, and going.

This war was lost, folks, the day we invaded a nation with whom we were at peace. Since Iraq is in Iraq and that’s in the Middle East. Like Vietnam next to China. And unlike Vietnam (about the only exception to a perfect match-up: stupidly done, impossible to win, etc.), this was a war of choice. George, Dick, Paul, Donald (not Duck) and, yes, and so sadly, Friedman. The Vietnamese War was begun by Napoleon Third, another arrogant fool, and an imperialist ferociously envious of his grandfather (sound familiar?) in 1870.

And this war will end precisely as it was foredoomed to end: four years ago, after invasion; or three years ago; or 50 years from now. Iraq is in Iraq. The oil God meant for Texas, in some heavenly foul-up, will still be under Iraq. And yes, there will be an increase in violence when we leave. Precisely for the length it will take, which is anyone’s guess. We can pour another four trillion dollars (about what it’s programmed to cost now), and another four or five thousand American lives, and another three-or four-hundred thousand Iraqi lives, and loves, and stay like imperial fools, or not. That’s the bleak truth. Elect a Democrat, or a Republican, it really won’t matter, in this one almost hopeless truth. We’ve past the point of being able to repent of this one. We will have hell to pay. Here. And in the Middle East. Count on it.

Impeachment offenses by the dozen here, folks. Waging aggressive war (see, Nurenberg); Lying to the Congress and the American people regarding the war power and violence (see, Watergate and the founding fathers and mothers, up the gig). AND, SOMETHING THE DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS IN THE SENATE AND NOW RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT DIDN’T SHARE WITH Mr. BUSH, UTTER VIOLATION OF HIS UNIQUE ROLE OF COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES.

Final point. THE FRAGILITY OF PEACE AND THE ETERNAL HALF-LIFE OF VIOLENCE, ONCE UNLEASHED.

The most vital mistake of Friedman…and all his friends in high places: in Jerusalem, Beirut, Kabul, Baghdad, the West Bank; and in New York, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and most importantly the White House, now more corrupt and vile than anything I’ve seen. I’ve seen them all since Lyndon Baines Johnson. I’ve taught of the American Presidency beginning with Washington. Through Washington and Adams and Jefferson and Madison, these founders knew the Constitution they drafted and had seen enough in war that, as Jefferson and Adams agreed in their old-age correspondence, “one war in our lifetime is quite enough.”

The successors, since Truman, simply do not understand in any serious respect the limits of military or financial power. They do not understand that violence, once unleashed, knows no boundary thereafter. Not even a little bit. I sent missive after missive to the Salt Lake Tribune, the Denver Post, the New York Times on this, and none published this stuff. Not then and not now. Not on 9/11 and not on May 31, 2007. Stalin asked derisively how many divisions the Pope had. Well, the Swiss Guards. But a later Pope ended the USSR. And Roman Christianity thrives. The USSR was finished. Forever. Unless Putin and Bush succeed, as they are trying to do, to bring back the bad old days of Cold War. ( Big military budgets, massive armies, new generations of nukes, all tested here. And if our own Republican senators and Congressman from Utah have their way, some deployed in Deseret…remember MX? And the waste product sold like it was gold and buried here, the dollars, hundreds of billions, to Energy Solutions.) With interlocking KGB’s and CIA’s since they all are the good old boys with hands and hearts and souls in each others pockets, forever in incestuous union.

We should go to war with a dirge. In black. In mourning for the dead and the wounded and the lost security and the trillions of dollars in debt on poor people’s backs whose legs and faces and spines are still shattered by the last war. The twentieth century never ended for these damned fools who go to war with trumpets and drums and lies and youth too young to drive safely or think with anything other than raging testosterone: breaking into homes, raping and killing and being killed; dying in droves or, sometimes, worse, living through hell and returning.

That’s why the founders made it harder to go to war than to drive a 1000- pound rock up Emigration Canyon with your nose. Or the one hand left since the last war.

For once you unleash violence it may not stop. At least, for a few hundred years. And with nukes, 1,000,000 years’ half-life.

So we mourn. And we make the fools and knaves prove to us that violence is better for peace than peace. And that’s no easy walk.

Edwin Brown Firmage (website, bio)
Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, Emeritus
University of Utah College of Law Salt Lake City, Utah

This entry was posted Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Ed Firmage, George W. Bush, Impeachment, Iraq, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.