News of a shift in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics to the point where “anti­war voic­es on the left have aligned with ‘Amer­i­ca First’ enthu­si­asts on the right who resist entan­gling the Unit­ed States in for­eign con­flicts”, will no doubt come as a relief to those who might be con­cerned about what recent ver­sions of “Amer­i­can val­ues” entan­gling might include.

When vari­a­tions of the same weapons used to “lib­er­ate” places like Iraq and Afghanistan from despots and tyran­ny are freely and rou­tine­ly used to kill chil­dren in schools, and jus­ti­fied as an inalien­able “con­sti­tu­tion­al right”, why would any­one admire, nev­er mind want to be entan­gled by, America’s ver­sion of democracy.
Leg­is­la­tors offer­ing “thoughts and prayers” to vic­tims of guns which the Sec­ond Amend­ment alleged­ly bestows a “God-giv­en right” to own, while derid­ing regimes which attribute poli­cies and actions they don’t like, but who wor­ship the same God, seems like an intel­lec­tu­al contradiction.
Then again, intel­lec­tu­als – and some main­stream pun­dits — excel at the seem­ing­ly inex­haustible human capac­i­ty for ratio­nal­i­sa­tion and eva­sion of aber­ra­tions star­ing them in the face.
It’s even eas­i­er to do at a safe dis­tance from the vis­cer­al real­i­ties of wars.
The result is a stag­ger­ing igno­rance of facts that are freely avail­able, by peo­ple who pro­fess to be in a posi­tion to help form opinions.

                                       A CASE IN POINT

A respect­ed (and often dis­cern­ing) New York Times colum­nist marked the twen­ti­eth anniver­sary of the inva­sion of Iraq by jus­ti­fy­ing his sup­port for it thus: “In fact, Iraqis suf­fered hor­rif­i­cal­ly under Hus­sein and suf­fered hor­rif­i­cal­ly under the insur­gency, and the force that destroyed both was the U.S. mil­i­tary, with tremen­dous sac­ri­fices by Iraqi secu­ri­ty forces. Amer­i­can troops help Iraqis do so against ISIS to this day.”
In actu­al fact: The first orders issued by Paul Bre­mer, the Wash­ing­ton-appoint­ed de fac­to post-Sad­dam dic­ta­tor in Bagh­dad, result­ed in a secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion “that ulti­mate­ly allowed a strong insur­gency, recruit­ed from unem­ployed dis­af­fect­ed youth, to devel­op, which paved the way for the begin­nings of the Islam­ic State in Iraq and al-Sham.”
Unde­terred, the colum­nist also insist­ed that those who may main­tain that after the 1991 man­gling of its forces, Saddam’s Iraq “wasn’t a seri­ous geopo­lit­i­cal threat” ignore, among oth­er hor­ri­ble things, “the Kur­dish refugee cri­sis to say noth­ing of his geno­ci­dal assaults on his own people.”
How­ev­er, the U.S. and oth­er West­ern nations knew full well that Sad­dam poi­son-gassed his own people.
Human Rights Watch obtained a tape of Sad­dam Hussein’s cousin Ali Has­san al-Majid, a.k.a.  “Chem­i­cal Ali” for his role in the attack­ing the Kurds boast­ing: “I will kill them all with chem­i­cal weapons. Who is going to say any­thing? The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty? F*** them”.
The West’s reac­tion was to try to lay most of the blame for the atroc­i­ty on Iran, and pun­ish Sad­dam with no more than the equiv­a­lent of a “tut-tut-naughty- boy-don’t- do-it- again.”

                              COMMITMENT COUNTS

The Kur­dish refugee cri­sis was an appalling result of a lack of com­mit­ment, fore­sight and, to put it blunt­ly, balls on the part of the first Bush administration.
It was the most gut-wrench­ing sto­ry in my far too-long list of wit­ness­ing human misery.
It should nev­er have happened.
Four weeks into Oper­a­tion Desert Storm, in a mes­sage deliv­ered to Iraqi civil­ians by inter­na­tion­al TV,  radio and leaflet drops from U.S.  air­craft,  Pres­i­dent George H.W, Bush called on Iraqis to  “fill the streets and alleys and bring down Sad­dam Hus­sein and his aides.”
The Kur­dish rebels in the north and the Shias in the south had been wait­ing and plan­ning for the chance for years.
They took it, Sad­dam retal­i­at­ed, the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion played Judas, and the Kurds had no choice but to flee across the mountains.
Just below the snow line at a place called Ishikverin, which in a bit­ter joke means “the light came” in Turk­ish,  thou­sands hud­dled in lean-tos and tents jury-rigged from bits of tar­pau­lin, plas­tic and cloth.
By the time Wash­ing­ton and its allies were shamed enough to set up the “safe haven” in Kur­dis­tan, the camp’s grave­yard had been expand­ing daily.
The depth of the pain, sad­ness, futil­i­ty and sense of hope­less­ness was summed up, as it often is, in a sin­gle image. A young woman with wind-burned cheeks sat, alone, star­ing into infin­i­ty. There were no tears in her eyes. Nor any spark of life. One hand lay gen­tly on a tiny pile of stones, the grave of her first child. A boy. Aged one.
I asked her, through our trans­la­tor, if she knew that Amer­i­can sol­diers were com­ing, and it would soon be safe for her to return home.
She raised her head. “What does it mat­ter?”, she said in a soft voice. “What does any­thing mat­ter anymore?”
That scene has been seared into my mem­o­ry for more than 30 years.
None of the fore­go­ing is in any way intend­ed to den­i­grate the courage and sac­ri­fices of the sol­diers who fought in Iraq and oth­er for­eign wars.
But the image I car­ry is one every politi­cian ought to have to con­front should they ever con­sid­er “get­ting entan­gled” with­out a com­plete plan and com­mit­ment again.

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