Worth it?

Pardon my skepticism but I don't understand the phrase "worth it" as used previously by Madeleine Albright and just yesterday by Condi Rice. When Albright was asked in 1996 if the lives of 100,000 Iraqi children was "worth it" (the it being the sanctions we were imposing on Iraq) she said that it was. I guess she must have meant that the sanctions were keeping Iraq from doing stuff they weren't supposed to be doing (like building atomic bombs and stuff). As it seems to have turned out Iraq had largely abandoned such stuff not long after the first Gulf War so they weren't doing this stuff anyway. But what the hell, 100,000 childrens' lives don't amount to a hill of beans when you're really doing "good." Besides, the Iraqis have plenty of children anyway. I don't know if Albright really believed this or was just saying what she thought needed to be said under the circumstances at that time. Maybe she did believe it. Personally, I don't believe there is any political goal worth the lives of 100,000 children. I think we might give Albright the benefit of the doubt. Either she believed it, or she felt she was doing her job.

Not so in the case of Condi. When she was asked if all the lives lost in Iraq and all the billions of dollars poured into that unfortunate country was worth it, she replied that yes, it indeed was. The problem I have with this is that there is no "it." We have accomplished nothing in Iraq. They did not have WMD's for us to destroy. They were not affiliated in any way in bin Laden, and by destroying Saddam we have made the country worse than it was under his dictatorship. We certainly are not spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. We are occupying their country against their will. We are obviously losing the "war" in spite of the lies from the White House. We have created a truly horrible civil war and are now caught up in it with no viable plan to withdraw and seemingly no viable options of any kind. And we are guilty of blatant war crimes, not the least of which was attacking Iraq in the first place. We haven't even succeeded as yet to gain control over all that oil. So just what is the "it" for which all this "worth" was expended? Condi Rice is every bit as delusional as Bush.

Our new Secretary of Defense, Gates, has just assured the Iraqi "government" that we are not going to abandon them and will be there for as long as necessary. Bush wants to increase the size of our military because it is going to be a long fight (presumably against terrorists). Cheney has said nothing will change as a result of the Democrats victories in the recent election. Bush is ignoring the Baker report (as predicted) and pretending to gather advice for "moving forward" (staying the course). This may be the only time Cheney got it right. Nothing has happened to change the neocons original goal. We are not going to bring our troops home from Iraq. Indeed, we may even send some more. We are not going to give up our goal of establishing a U.S. friendly government that will do our bidding. We are not going to give up the permanent bases we have been building or the enormous unprecedented Embassy. Even the Baker report did not recommend that we actually withdraw all of our troops. And as far as I know no one so far has ever denied the permanent bases even though there have been occasions when that was called for. The issue of the bases just seems to be ignored as if it is not important. Cheney wants that oil so badly he will be willing to sell out the Sunnis and join forces with the devil if that's the only way he can get it. The neocons will never vacate Iraq until they are forcibly thrown out just as we were in Vietnam (or perhaps until we have successfully privatized their oil industry in such a way we have control over it with the help of a puppet government - this seems increasingly unlikely). In the meanwhile pay no attention to any claims about withdrawing our troops, leaving Iraq to the Iraqis, and so on.