Who's Responsible For This Mess?

Wouldn't it be nice if the NYT front page was written by Mike Whitney:

The Bush administration has decided to pursue a strategy that is unprecedented in US history. It has decided to continue to prosecute a war that has already been lost morally, strategically, and militarily. But fighting a losing war has its costs. America is much weaker now than it was when Bush first took office in 2000; politically, economically and militarily. US power and prestige around the world will continue to deteriorate until the troops are withdrawn from Iraq. But that's unlikely to happen until all other options have been exhausted. Deteriorating economic conditions in the financial markets are putting enormous downward pressure on the dollar. The corporate bond and equities markets are in disarray; the banking system is collapsing, consumer spending is down, tax revenues are falling, and the country is headed into a painful and protracted recession. The US will leave Iraq sooner than many pundits believe, but it will not be at a time of our choosing. Rather, the conflict will end when the United States no longer has the capacity to wage war. That time is not far off.

The Iraq War signals the end of US interventionism for at least a generation; maybe longer. The ideological foundation for the war (preemption/regime change) has been exposed as a baseless justification for unprovoked aggression. Someone will have to be held accountable. There will have to be international tribunals to determine who is responsible in the deaths of over one million Iraqis.

I urge readers to pay attention to that final para: we affluent Westerners will never know true peace until we bring those responsible for this tragedy to account.

We need War Crime tribunals, however much the complicit media and political parties might scoff at the idea. The general public may also scoff at the idea today, but we just have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing until the truth is heard.

What's the alternative? Our silence is complicity, and the dead deserve more than that. The living thirst for justice. If we do not want the righteous hatred of generations whose lives and countries we have destroyed, we need to show that these atrocities, though done in our name, were not sanctioned with our blessing.