We're All Complicit

Take a look at Frank Rich in today's NYTimes for a discussion that we all know we should be having but have successfully avoided for too many years. As much as the Bushies have tried to insulate the American people from the Iraq war, we know enough of the sordid details that it's our war and our responsibility.

It was always the White House's plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there's no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.

Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military's holes. With the war's entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq.

. . .
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those "good Germans" who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It's up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war's last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country's good name.

"Good Germans" are not exactly the kind of company that we should want to keep. But until we force the weak-kneed Democratic Congress to stand up, hold the White House accountable, and change administration policy, that's exactly what we're doing.