Race, the Race and War

What is the first task of government? Bush would certainly argue that it is to provide security, even if that means dismantling 200-year-old civil protections put in place to guard against absolutism.

Given that vision, wouldn’t a better yardstick by which to judge the Iraqi war situation be the security of the Iraqi people in their lives and persons, instead of, say, the casualty figures among the occupiers? Thursday’s new round of massive terrorist bombings in Baghdad’s public markets is a reminder that whatever else the invasion did or does in the future, it has failed in this primary responsibility of maintaining public order.

The mantra coming from this administration and now from the candidates to continue it has been, We keep you safe. If you believe the invasion of Iraq was part of that mission, then you willingly traded the physical integrity of those 22 million people for your own comfort—rather an un-Christian attitude.

Be that as it may, what can we assume about the Iraqis feelings toward the Green-Zone state that ostensibly rules them? By the Bushite criteria, we could safely conclude that they find it so far off the scale of legitimacy as to be laughable, were there anything droll to be found there.

I engage in this exercise only to offer a reminder that the initiation and pursuit of this war was also about race, just as was the assault on Vietnam in its time. As our country contemplates the possibility of a non-white president for the first time in its history, there will be a lot of discussion of how far we have come from the color bar and de jure ethnic separation. That was racist, and the system was dismantled; but its spirit lives on in our vision of the world and its peoples.