Who Cares?

While one may take heart in the fact that the American public just doesn't seem invested enough in the war effort to let the Bush administration get away with the full-scale war in Iraq that its Right Zionist insiders wanted, what do we make of the fact that even the highest-ranking elected representatives and officials in Washington complicit in the war don't seem to care enough to learn the difference between Sunnis and Shi'ites? Call me crazy, but if you're in a position of power and have come out in support of one or another faction's imperialist agenda, wouldn't you at some point bother to figure out the details and long-term implications of their war strategies?

Of course, Jeff Stein's above-linked piece in The New York Times could just as easily be applied to the anti-war camp. "If knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war," as Stein says, then anti-imperialists should think twice before finding common cause with just anyone who opposes the Bush administration's execution of the war in Iraq. At home as well as abroad, the basic question remains: "Who's on what side today, and what does each want?" Perhaps the press and the rival cabals of warmakers have done such a good job at mystifying and oversimplifying the on-the-ground realities - as well as the decisionmakers' motivations, strategies, and designs on Iraq - that they've fooled the public and the powerful alike. I may be more inclined to believe that, for better or worse, most of us just don't care. And that may be good enough for me.

What I want to know is this: How many people who do have an opinion on - or worse yet, a say in - US war policy remain blind to the truly monumental stakes of the project in Iraq?