Conservative Columnist: Suggesting American Troops Abroad Are 'Foreigners' Is a Grievous Insult

Posted by D. Aristophanes, Sadly, No! at 11:48 AM on July 4, 2009.

Caribou Barbie could take a lesson from Dick Cheney — you’re supposed to shoot the other guy in the face, not yourself.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

Rather, it’s a wonderful new column from the Moonie Times’ Diana West:

Iraq is Victorious… Over the ‘Foreign’ U.S.?

I’ve been stewing over something really lousy that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been saying since June 20: that Iraqis have won a “great victory” over the “foreign presence in Iraq.”

That “great victory,” as he calls it, is the June 30 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq’s cities. That “foreign presence,” as he calls it, is the United States — the thousands of mainly young American men who have fought a vicious enemy under the harshest conditions for more than six long years, with 4,321 Americans killed, many thousands wounded, often grievously so, and some small, tortured number wrongfully ensnared by the U.S. military justice system in apparent deference to Iraqi political considerations.

“Ingrate” doesn’t begin to describe this al-Maliki creep — or, as all too many conservatives and Bush loyalists persist in thinking of him, our Iraqi “ally.” But let’s skip the labels and stick to the implications of the Iraqi prime minister’s rhetoric: He has transformed long-term American sacrifice on Iraq’s behalf into a residual “foreign presence” over which he now declares Iraqi victory.

Speaking of Cheney, he really has been doing his bit to keep the spirit of 2005 alive — and in the frankly dull Age of Obama, this has not been unappreciated by liberal comedy bloggers. Mocking garden-variety stupidity is one thing, but stupidity that is in a position of authority is the real mother lode … I’ve been pretty much mailing it in since the election because teasing the politically marginalized just doesn’t instill one with the same sense of purpose, no matter how venal the wingnuts remain.

Which is why Diana West’s little diatribe caught my attention.

The scare quotes around ‘foreign’ are pleasing enough, but trotting out ‘ingrate’ really puts this bit over the top — it’s a throwback to a time when the invasion of Iraq was still being defended by its architects as a great victory for human rights, a little trip down memory lane for anyone who ever felt the guilty thrill of encountering a particularly juicy example of the up-is-downism that propped up that earlier era’s conventional wisdom on aggressive war.

It brings some small joy to my heart to see that someone out there in wingnuttia is still defending our Baghdad satrapy in the old, neocon fashion — by flat-out denying that our occupation of another country is really an occupation, that we are not gate-crashing foreigners in Iraq at all but rather invited guests who occasionally shoot our hosts and blow up their property.

The Bush years were awful, of course, but you have to admit they were also awfully fun. Almost enough to make me want to tempt fate and hope for Cheney-Palin in 2012, if only just to relieve the ennui.

Tagged as: maliki, wing-nuts, west