Blood for Oil: Year 3 Ends

On the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration seems to be looking for a change of topic. Pew Research Center polls report American citizens’ increasing disapproval of the Iraq War and Bush’s foreign policy; specifically, many Americans now feel that the Iraq War has made us less safe from terrorists (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=272). With midterm elections coming and Democrats looking better in the polls than they have in years, Bush needs to divert attention from Iraq, so he's playing a new fear card: Iran.

In a public radio interview on March 17, Joseph Cirincione, senior associate and director for Non-Proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, remarked that Cheney, Rice and others in the Bush coterie have been amping up anti-Iranian rhetoric in recent weeks, causing Cirincione to change his previous belief that, "an impending attack on Iran was merely the fear of left-wing bloggers." He now believes a US attack on Iran is likely, though, as he points out, we haven’t got enough military personnel to wage another war. (To hear the full interview, go to http://www.kuow.org/theconversation.asp)

I teach in a town that’s bordered by an Army base and an Air Force base. Many of my students get deployed, or they lose their husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and friends to this war. Those who come back, or know troops who’ve come back, tell stories of sand fleas that bite to the bone, poor wages, poor conditions, insufficient armor. They deserve better than an unjustified and unjustifiable war. And the red herring specter of Iran will never change that.