By Clark Goldband

Nobody asked me but I think Bush doesn’t understand English. There’s no other way to describe it. How long can we sing this song of freedom’s on the march, when the only thing marching are Americans and Iraqis to their graves.

A recent CIA Intelligence report leaked to the media by moderate Republicans says the best case scenario for America is that we’re out of Iraq in three to five years. Worst case: we never leave.

There is no denying that Saddam was a brutal dictator. But we must all remember the reason for going to war was not because “he was a mean guy,” but because “the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America…with atomic weapons,” a regular line in a 2002 Bush stump speech.

Boy, how two years make a difference. We went from “knowing where the weapons were” to “ummm, he’s a mean person.”

I hate my neighbor, but that doesn’t mean I can remove him from his home. I was on the fence on invading Iraq, I didn’t support attacking and I was hoping Bush would prove me wrong. I gave the sheriff from Crawford the benefit of the doubt.

Now let’s all take a deep breath before I say this: perhaps the world would be a better place if we left Saddam in power for the greater good of the world. A Kantian theory, if you will. He was horrific, yet at the same time Iraq was under control. People had jobs and Hussein controlled his borders. Bush fails to rationalize that many Iraqis think having a job is more important than their sisters’ ability to walk freely down the street in a miniskirt.

It’s obscene for neocons to bring forward the brutality of this dictator while at the same time we’re supporting much worse. Most Americans may not know our foreign policy double standards, but certainly the rest of the world does. Perhaps that’s why no one trusts us.

In Uzbekistan, autocrat Islam Karimov rules with an iron fist, crushing and torturing anyone disagreeing with his administration. A British Forensic Intelligence report believes that Karimov has even commissioned the approval of two political opponents being boiled to death.

The top United Nations official on torture Theo van Boven even said that political torture is systemic and widespread throughout that country.

Yet after this statement and many other declarations by the European Union, Karimov was invited with pomp and circumstance to the White House in an Oval Office meeting with President Bush. Bush “expressed his appreciation for Karimov’s decision to allow U.S. and coalition forces to be stationed in Uzbekistan during the war against terror,” according to spokesman Sean McCormack.

Saudi Arabia, our “friend” (wink wink) has one of the worst human rights records in the world. Saudi courts continue to hand down corporal punishment for such offenses as drinking, or the amazingly vague “sexual deviance” law.

You would probably find more content in one volume of a 1980 encyclopedia than in the substantially censored Internet service. Saudi women are still living in the stone age as they face discrimination in every facet of their lives, from job advancement to dress to the “legal system.” 

Unfortunately, the list could go on and on. Saddam was a son of a bitch; there are no two ways about it. But people had jobs, borders were secure and women could work. Hussein feared al Qaeda almost as much as we did because they were a threat to his westernized style of dictatorship.

Today, Iraq is in chaos. We’ve lumped Iraq and Afghanistan into the same pot, a big mistake according to Middle East expert and former Clinton Administration Undersecretary of Defense John White.

White served under William Cohen and dealt directly with such terrorist incidents as the Khobar Towers bombings in Saudi Arabia. Speaking to him by phone, White told me that he is dismayed by what he’s seeing.

“What has happened is that the war in Iraq has been a huge distraction of resources, skilled people and leadership. And as a result, we’ve too much neglected the fundamental war on terrorism, such as Afghanistan, where we’ve never put in the sort of commitment that we need to put in to make sure that it will be a success. More broadly with our allies, we’ve alienated much of the Muslim world – just the people that we need to cooperate with.”

Two out of three pieces to the puzzle are in place. To find the third just look on a map. We’ve already started talking tough on Iran and now our troops are working freely within two neighboring nations. Has this plan been in place from the start or are things just looking like a gigantic coincidence? If Bush is given another term he may declare: we’ve got’er surrounded, now stick’em up.