Nothing ever happens

Biden Does Iraq

Reading the New York Times today I was struck once again how nothing ever happens. The immediate past, along with the more distant past, never happened and all that is left to us is the here and the now, apparently. And it’s not just the news media but our trusted leaders like Joe Biden as well. The news of course, as always, happily goes along with whatever absurd statements are emanating from the person of Joe Biden and ilk.

Where to begin, the article is pregnant with possibility after breathless possibility. Let’s begin with Biden’s asinine analogy comparing Iraq’s situation and that of our Floundering Fathers in their time.

Link

BAGHDAD — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. drew an analogy to the signers of the Declaration of Independence on Sunday in exhorting Iraqi leaders to end the paralysis that has stalled the formation of a government since the parliamentary elections four months ago.

“When they signed that declaration, many of them did not even like one another,” Mr. Biden, making his fourth trip to Baghdad as vice president, told a group of Iraqi leaders at a Fourth of July reception at the residence of the United States ambassador, Christopher R. Hill. “My plea to you is to continue what you started,” he said.

The problems with the above “analogy” are manifold but the basic premise, a thread that runs throughout U.S. foreign policy, is entirely at fault because it is once again American exceptionalism rearing its ugly head urging the Iraqi to form a government, pleading with them in fact. Who invaded and occupied Iraq? Biden doesn’t know, the NYT doesn’t know, and, in all likelihood, much of the public doesn’t know either. The reason for this remarkable situation is that nothing ever happens. Nothing happened nine years ago, nothing happened last winter, yesterday? Why, it’s gone without a trace. Never happened, never will, nothing ever happens.

Writers for the NYT happily play along with the nothing ever happens game:

Mr. Biden has visited Iraq 17 times since 2003, when he was still a senator, and has seen the country evolve from an occupied war zone to a bloody sectarian battlefield to a fragile democracy. His latest visit has required a delicate diplomatic dance of trying to subtly influence Iraq’s internal politics while not appearing to impugn the nation’s sovereignty.

How mysterious, somehow, Iraq, went from a war zone to a sectarian battlefield (civil war) to a fragile (that’s one way to describe it) democracy but nobody knows who did this to Iraq, it’s a mystery! Perhaps we will learn who did this someday, I have high hopes that this shall be so. Maybe the NYT with its vast resources and connections will be able to unearth what actually happened. Let us forge ahead and read on.

I have usually assumed that our leaders are at least normal in the smarts department, more unscrupulous than most, indoctrinated certainly, but Biden is in a class by himself with this astounding statement:

“You should not, and I’m sure you will not, let any state, from the United States to any state in the region, dictate what will become of you all,” Mr. Biden said in his reception remarks.

I’m quite sure it would be terribly wrong for the U.S. to dictate what Iraq will become. Not after waging an illegal war against a nation that had done nothing against the U.S. murdering their leader by lynching him, destroying the infrastructure, polluting the land air and water, outright murdering who knows how many Iraqi and in the end causing over one million deaths either directly or indirectly but certainly, yes, Biden is quite correct in this instance, Iraq will let no state dictate the terms of their existence or what remains of it. But according to what Biden says above he must believe that, once again, nothing ever happened. If you have the stomach, Biden has more valuable insights for us:

He noted that he was bestowing American citizenship in a building that housed a dictator who “stood for everything that we don’t stand for.”

“I find it delicious that that’s happening,” he said.

Certainly yes, as Biden stands atop the stinking ruins, reeking of sewage and death that he helped create, with the bodies of the helpless, the old, the sick, the young, rotting deep beneath the smoking rubble he crows about how we stand against all the evil that Saddam Hussein was. Saddam Hussein did kill his own people yet has not The Obama claimed the right to do so without being beholding to anyone but his own magnificence? And don’t be fooled by the, if they aren’t on American soil caveat, I doubt that if one of the targeted was found on U.S. soil it would suddenly make The Obama shy about greasing anyone on his snuff sheet. Considering what we did to Iraq Saddam Hussein was practically a saint.

Obviously, one cannot predict all things, yet it is entirely predictable that when the U.S. finally leaves Iraq, say in the year 4795, whatever condition Iraq is in, it will be their fault entirely despite all of our own best well intentioned efforts.

It won’t really matter because nothing ever really happens anyway.