Former US president gave a speech the other day and told the truth, even though he did so inadvertently. He mused about a war that was the “decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” Bush quickly corrected himself, saying he meant to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. Then, chillingly he quipped “Iraq, too, anyway,” he added under his breath to laughter from the audience at his presidential center in Dallas.
Chuckles about a disastrous Middle East war based on erroneous "intelligence" which killed untold numbers of civilians as well as thousands of combatants. The organization called Iraq Body Count estimates that 185,000 to 200,000 civilians have died since the Iraq war began. This is a horrendous total.
I have suggested along the war that Bush is a war criminal and that while Trump is a reprehensible human being Bush may exceed him in infamy. Now that the COVID death toll in the States has exceed a million that assertion could be contested. Yet somehow Bush has been rehabilitated, becoming the kindly great-uncle who passes candies to Michelle Obama at official functions. Much has been made of the Christian faith of George Bush, who spoke of a conversion which saved his marriage and helped him quit drinking. Yet the Iraq War came after that supposedly life-changing experience.
Who can say why humans turn their backs on democracy and peace-making in favour of strongmen and destructive conflict. While the notion of "origin sin" has been badly abused, surely our propensity for war is just that, and our love affair with escalatory violence is a failure of our nature.
The first conviction of a Russian as a war criminal for murdering an unarmed Ukrainian civilian happened this week. The young man accepted responsibility for his cowardly act but we know that Russian tryant Vladmir Putin, the criminal behind the atrocities which are taking place in Ukraine, may never be brought to justice.
Early this morning I listened to Business Daily on CBC Radio which addressed the multi-trillion dollar "military industrial complex", to revive the cautionary phrase coined by another US president, Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell 1961 address to the nation. What might be achieved if those trillions squandered through the arms industry and conflict were deployed to address the climate emergency, and world hunger, and health care?
We need to speak boldly about the folly of war, even supposedly good or just wars. In an age when war can be wage remotely -- drones are now an industry exceeding 10 billion a year -- there is no such thing as a righteous conflict.
I suppose I'm sounding more like a pacifist Quaker all the time. I could do worse.
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