Baghdad bomb kills 4, raising U.S. death toll 4,000

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The U.S. military says a roadside bomb has killed four U.S. soldiers in Baghdad. That raises the overall American death toll to at least 4,000, a grim milestone as the war enters its sixth year.

The rest is here.

I must admit that my outrage about the war has diminished over the years. My personal life, as well as the ongoing nature of our psychotic occupation of Iraq, has pushed my concern into the background to some extent. It's difficult to be angry about something for so long. But the fact that it has now been five years since the invasion, and that we've now lost four thousand good Americans to the whims of the US establishment, at this point, really just make me feel, more than anything else, helpless. Powerless. Pointless.

It would be very nice to jump onto the Democratic bandwagon and really believe that the so-called "liberal" party is going to do the right thing and get us out, but, in spite of both Clinton's and Obama's groovy peace rhetoric, that's just not going to happen. That is, Obama and Clinton are lying. If elected, they plan to keep a substantial troop presence in Iraq for years to come. Probably because they think it's necessary, or that it must continue to be an American responsibility, or some similar kind of bullshit.

The Republicans, of course, are fielding a candidate who wants us there for "100 years" or more. They're no help, to make a gross understatement.

So it doesn't matter that a huge majority of the country want us out. It just doesn't matter. The US power establishment, or wealthy elite, whatever you want to call it, wants us there, and there is where we will remain. For a very long time. Patriotic young Americans who believe they're fighting for democracy and decency will continue to die, continue to be crippled and maimed. Ruined lives for an establishment that wants to control the oil.

Okay, I'm angry again. That's all it took. Thinking about how my opinion, and the opinion of most Americans, the moral opinion, just doesn't matter. Decency and morality just don't matter. John McCain is an immoral and despicable excuse for a human being. Hillary and Obama, I'm sure, have decent motives, but their secret support for an ongoing occupation of Iraq place them squarely in the same moral category as their Republican opponent.

That is, they are immoral and despicable, too.

Because there is absolutely nothing that the US can do to make things right over there. We can't help establish democracy. We can't get the Shia and Sunnis to get along. We can't stop our soldiers from becoming torturers and mass murderers. It's as though the American power establishment were at the roulette wheel, down hundreds of thousands of dollars, still hoping against all odds for the big payoff.

It's all insane, and we just don't matter. Iraqis don't matter. Nothing matters except keeping Iraq as a plaything.

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