"Lord of War" Indeed

We laughed a bit yesterday.  Not a good natured, innocent chuckle due to some vague absurdity that life brings on a regular basis.  No, this laugh was of the gallows humor type.  You see, Sunday night we sat down to watch the Nicholas Cage film, "Lord of War", a decidedly sardonic and droll film about the life and times of an arms dealer.  After digesting the truly Machiavellian sketch of the main character (meaning - he was utterly amoral, disregarding good guys and bad guys and seeing only customers who could pay - he comments that he sold to every one except Osama bin Laden, though he clarifies that it was not on some moral ground, simply because bin Laden kept bouncing checks) we woke to the story that the Pentagon had lost nearly 30% of the AK47s (and other military hardware) that were theoretically to go to equipping the Iraqi security forces.

For a brief primer on the main points of this story, head on over to MSNBC and watch Keith Olbermann's Countdown segment from last night.  He spends some time talking to Gen. Wesley Clark about the ramifications of such a loss, and posits the theory that perhaps some of these weapons are now in the hands of the insurgents.  Great, Americans getting shot at by their own weapons.  Lovely.  Truly lovely.

The entire bit is rife with irony.  We sit and watch a film about how the fall of the Soviet Union drew arms dealers to the shattered Empire, and then wake up to the news of missing American weapons.  Gee, do you think someone in the chain of disbursement might have walked off with this particular cache?  No, couldn't happen, right?  Somebody certainly wasn't beguiled by the type of money that was out there for the taking.

The question, of course, is how could this have happened?  In Iraq should you not be rather diligent about keeping an eye on large stores of weaponry, as that seems to be the only currency worth a darn in the country at this point in time. 

"Hey, Ken.  Maybe, just maybe, the weapons disappeared after we handed them over to the Iraqi forces.  Perhaps your rampant cynicism is blinding you to the fact that it might not be Americans on the take."

Oh, no.  I don't discount that at all.  In fact, I am sure that they disappeared after the delivery.  I question, though, the wisdom of providing arms to a group that may or may not have purely honorable motives.  Weapons must be a bit tough to come by, as we use to be the greatest supplier for Iraq (especially during the 80's when we financed and supported (tacitly, of course) their drawn out war with Iran).  My guess is that a steady supply of arms from Iran is not consistent, thus they needed to find new avenues for their needs.  Simply watch the Americans arm the Iraqi security forces, pay off the right people (or whack the right people) and voila, you now have in excess of 100,000 AK47s and other various and sundry items needed to continue to feed the insurgency.

No, the real question is whether the Pentagon had any plans in place for what would happen to the weapons once delivered.  Did they track them?  Set personnel in place to insure that they got into the right hands?  Provide necessary encouragement to the security forces to insure that they actually used the weapons themselves?  Did they think ahead?

I find this to be perfectly consistent with everything else that has happened since Bush and Co. cooked up this scheme to invade Iraq.  First, was it sound planning to attack a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11?  Second, once you have made the decision to invade a nation, should you not have a good plan to deal with the possibility of looting and trashing ancient artifacts from one of the world's first civilizations? (Yes, that is something you should think about  we tended to get rather miffed at the Taliban for destroying cultural artifacts) as the war will come to an end some day, and it would be nice to still have some record of our past.)  Third, if you are planning on invading a country, with the express purpose of...what exactly was the purpose?  Oh, that's right - WMD, Spreading Democracy Throughout the Region, etc, etc.  Nonetheless, if you are planning on invading so that you can reshape the nation to an image more to your liking, should you not have a plan to do so?  Meaning - should you not enter said country with enough troops in order to insure that all goes according to plan, regardless of whether you think their military is up to the task or not?  Go big or go home, I do believe that that is what a certain Colin Powell advocated.  Fourth, once the campaign was being planned, should you not make a few contingency plans just in case it did not work out?  I suppose this only is a consideration if you tend toward the realistic point of view that sometimes dirty little wars of aggression don't always work.  Fifth, should you not have an exit strategy?

Probably not.  You see, that takes more than a bit of something that Bush and Friends have never had:  Foresight.

The latest mishap is, unfortunately, simply par for the course.  Worst of all, they will never even admit that this is a problem.  Just one more bit to ignore.  Just one more screw-up to be swept under the rug. Simple the latest bit of news that somehow will become the fault of the liberal press.  'See, see' the right-wing blogosphere and Fox news commentators (and now the entire Wall Street Journal) will yammer, 'one more example of showing only the bad news, and never the grand and glorious victory that grows stronger every day'.

Go buy the movie.  Watch Nicholas Cage's character find one way after another to dodge the reality that he is the worst form of self-centered, money-hungry, amoral fool.  He doesn't even seem to realize his loss of humanity.  He doesn't even seem to realize that he traded away all that makes him alive.  Even his remorse is tempered with the pleasure of knowing that he will always get away with his actions, because nobody can actually bring him to justice.  He glides away on a trail of his own slime.

Pity we seem to know people just like him.  Pity that they seem to be theoretically working for us. 

For additional blogosphere reaction:  Cottonmouth Press, Hell's Handmaiden, and Viva Veracruz

Comments

[John]

Thanks for the link. Good post.