Hand power back to Americans, tooPage 2 of 2 -- By erasing nearly a third of fallen Americans from his consciousness, Wolfowitz symbolized how the lying wormed a hole right through what little remained of Bush's conscience. Treating Iraqi civilians as if they did not exist begat a chain of dehumanization that ended with American soldiers ceasing to exist. Along the way, there was chump change thrown at surviving families of American attacks, prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib, and holding prisoners in the war on terror without trial at Guantanamo Bay (a policy that was overturned this week by the Supreme Court). There are many instances of individual bravery and humanity toward Iraqis by American soldiers. Overall, Iraq tragically proved that you cannot dehumanize the other without diminishing yourself.
Iraq also proved that you cannot conduct the most wasteful war since Vietnam without diminishing opportunity at home. This week in celebrating the handover of power, the administration boasted that during the occupation 33,000 teachers were trained, 77,000 public works jobs were created, and 2,200 schools and 240 hospitals were rehabilitated. The Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive Washington think tank, last week calculated that the money spent on the war or about to be approved by Congress could have instead paid for in the United States:
The cost of the war will go past $200 billion sometime next year. That will be nine times more than what the federal government spends in job training and employment. The study projected that the war will cost each American household an average of $3,415. The financial costs, of course, are only an addendum to the human costs. Bush boasted that the handover "marks a proud moral achievement." The invasion was one of the most immoral acts in US history. With 138,000 troops still there, the occupation is a long way from over. We all know the Iraqi people really don't have their country back. As long as that is true, we will never get ours back, either.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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About 3 million new elementary school teachers;
