A Mercenary Society
Recent polls show that more than half the public believes the United States can't win the war and can't establish a stable democracy in Iraq, but surveys also indicate that many continue to believe that sending the troops was the right thing to do.
This suggests that a majority of the public can recognize that the United States has failed in the stated mission but cannot yet see that the stated mission was a lie. This was never a war about weapons of mass destruction or stopping terrorism (indeed, the war has created terrorism, on both sides), nor is it at heart about establishing democracy in Iraq. The U.S. invasion of Iraq is -- as all U.S. interventions in Middle East have been -- about extending and deepening U.S. dominance in the region with the world's most crucial energy resources.
Part of the barrier to a clear understanding of this is the belief that the United States, by definition, always acts benevolently in the world. But also standing in the way of an honest analysis is the reality that the brutal imperialist U.S. policies, while devised by elites, are being carried out by ordinary Americans. Can we in the United States come to terms with the fact that we are the "good Germans" of our era, routinely allowing pseudo-patriotic loyalties to override moral decision-making? Can we look at ourselves honestly in the mirror when so many of us are implicated in the imperialist system?