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Is there anything we can accuse our adversaries of that we are not now guilty of ourselves: Intervention in foreign affairs, violations of international law, defiance of the Geneva conventions, contravention of democracy, fostering conflict and supplying arms to hostile forces?

From torture to aggressive war, from the nullification of Habeas Corpus to illegal spying, from denial of human rights to denial of planetary catastrophe, we have as a nation mastered the art of denying hard truths.

In the eyes of the world, we are a nation that has lost its way. In the eyes of our leadership, we are a nation that never makes mistakes. We are a nation of impregnable virtue. We are a nation incapable of nefarious intent or crimes against humanity.

The hard truth is we are a nation so cowardly or foolhardy that we cannot accept even the possibility that we have done wrong, any wrong, when in fact we have done greater wrong than any nation on earth at this time in history.

We can the debate the culpability of the Sudanese government in the genocide of Darfur but we cannot debate the accountability of our government in what will one day be widely recognized as genocide in Iraq.

We can debate the future of post occupation Iraq but we cannot acknowledge that Iraqi collaborators have their own debt to pay just as the Vichy French did in occupied France. We are accountable for upheaval in that country and fueling natural divides with explosives and a blow torch but those who chose to side with a foreign power, regardless of motive or rationale, must have their own demons to confront.

It is a hard truth but one that can no longer be left unspoken.

The hard truth is that we have shattered Iraq and its repair will require both time and international diplomacy. It will require bloodletting and violent reprisal but justice mandates that the occupying power cannot be allowed to control its outcome.


The hard truth is the community of nations cannot allow an aggressor to profit from its crimes. The world cannot stand idly by while we remain entrenched inside impregnable fortresses and barricaded embassies. Rather, we must be removed from the equation for the people’s will to be manifest.

What this nation needs now is the courage to confront the hard truths. We have betrayed our founding principles. We have betrayed the community of nations. We have lost our way and the longer we hide our heads in Arabian sand, the greater the harm.

In time, the world will recover from the disaster in Iraq. In time, Iraq will find a way to heal the wounds that we have ripped open by our bloody invasion, brutal occupation, by our subterfuge and meddling in the name of peacekeeping.

The hard truth is: We are the disease and we must be removed before the victim dies, before the patient can begin to heal.

Those philosophers who take to the pulpit in warning of dark and dire consequences, who plead for more time, more treasure, more deadly weapons, and more deaths, they are not practitioners of the healing arts; they are magicians; they are third rate armchair warriors who have already co-authored the greatest foreign policy blunder in modern history.

Future historians will gape and wonder at the monumental folly, mendacity and arrogance of the Bush White House and its co-conspirators in the governing elite.

At any cost, with as little delay as humanly possible, we must get out of Iraq – not only for our own benefit but first and foremost for the Iraqi people.

It is the final and ultimate posture of arrogance to believe that Iraqis cannot and should not create their own post-Saddam nation.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE APPEARED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, PEACE-EARTH-JUSTICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, PACIFIC FREE PRESS, LEFTWARD, DISSIDENT VOICE AND COUNTERPUNCH. SEE RANDOM JACK: WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM