FIRST DENIAL, THEN WHAT?

When I first read CIA director Porter Goss's recent Congressional testimony that "Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists" and "these jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focus on acts of urban terrorism," I intended to post an item about Dear Leader's Big Lie that the invasion of Iraq would quell terrorism. But I never got around to it. And now I don't have to, because Bob Herbert has done it for me in his column this morning, "Iraq, Then And Now."

Herbert writes: "So tell me again. What was this war about? In terms of the fight against terror,the war in Iraq has been a big loss. We've energized the enemy." And as anyone with sense would be, he's dismayed by the sheer hypocrisy of Dear Leader's regime:

[T]he administration has taken every opportunity since since Sept. 11, 2001, to utilize the lofty language of freedom, democracy and the rule of law while secretly pursuing policies that are both unjust and profoundly inhumane. ...

It may be that most Americans would prefer not to know about these practices, which are nothing less than malignant cells that are already spreading in the nation's soul. Denial is often the first response to the most painful realities."

If you don't believe that, think of what the Germans who came after the Holocaust have experienced with collective guilt. Germany's first response was denial. Among some Germans it still is. But among many more it is not. Now think of us Americans, who have yet to accept the idea of collective guilt for black slavery and the decimation of Native American peoples.

I'm willing to bet the majority of Americans by far still have not come to grips with America's own genocidal history. Even the horrific atrocities of Vietnam have receded in memory, as if they are part of someone else's remote past -- to the point where this nation has allowed itself to be misled into a war in which new crimes against humanity again bear witness against its ideals.