A Meditation on Peacemaking: Americans Need to Break the Cycle of War

By John Grant

All we are saying is give peace a chance
             -John Lennon

As George W. Bush paints images of his toes in the bathtub and portraits of his beloved dog Barney, it’s hard not to humanize the man. Who'd a thunk he had an artist somewhere inside him. The work is, well, a bit primitive, but it’s nice to look at. He doesn’t show up in public much, but the other day he was photographed in the audience with a bunch of delighted African women while his wife Laura and Michelle Obama spoke about the empowerment of women. Unlike his vice president from the dark side, he seems determined to avoid commenting on war issues.

Meanwhile, Iraq (here, we should pronounce it I-Rack) has become a charnel house once again. Iraq was the sovereign plaything Mr. Bush and his cronies used to turn him from an aimless deer in the headlights into a bully war president. W's plaything is now being overrun in the west and north by a band of psychopathic religious killers. In the corridors of Washington power and in many editorial rooms the war drums are beating again and, as is always the case, truth is going down for the count.

ISIS extremists have overwhelmed the tough Kurdish Pesh Merga troops, and we’re bombing people again in Iraq. The Obama administration no doubt had visions of a Vietnam-style endgame rout in process. Never one to fear predictability, war-monger-in-chief John McCain says Obama's bombing is not enough. We’re also dropping food and water to Iraqis of the Yazidi ethnic group holding out and starving on the barren Sinjar Mountain, which is on the edge of the Kurdish area of Iraq. ISIS has taken control of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq.

I’m a 30-year veteran of the antiwar peace movement, and this horrific mess taxes my limits. It’s like watching the apocalypse unfold or, like 100 years ago at the start of World War One, realizing those in charge are vane, plutocratic, incompetent bozos who don’t give a rat’s ass about life. The issue is not what’s good for ordinary Iraqis; it’s what’s good for America. What’s good for Israel. What’s good for those on top of the heap who don’t want to lose the power they’ve accumulated. And don’t ask how they accumulated it.

That ISIS is a natural outgrowth of the Bush Iraq War is a no-brainer. But no one is supposed to mention that. Instead, we chuckle at the cuddly irony of the former president’s paintings. It’s my supposition that George W. Bush is actually a feeling human being and a pretty simple guy who's using his plutocratic wealth to hide out from America, lest his culpability be more publicly discussed...

For the rest of this article by JOHN GRANT in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new uncompromising four-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2408