Never has there been a greater disappointment than the over-hyped report of the Iraq Study Group, chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. If not for the leaks and rumors, the disappointment would be palpable. If anything, the report confirms what anyone who has ever suffered through bureaucratic deliberations already knew: If you want nothing to be done, appoint a committee.

Normally, commissions are appointed to bury inconvenient truths like the convoluted circumstance of a presidential assassination or an orchestrated terrorist attack on the three pillars of our society. Expecting the truth from a politically appointed commission recalls Samuel Beckett’s existential masterpiece: Waiting for Godot.

Expecting wisdom from the Baker-Hamilton commission is like looking for the seed of creation in a toilet bowl.

In fairness, the ISG produced a skillful report, skillfully executed to provide political cover to both dominant parties and, should he possess the talent and tact to play along, especially the president.

The debate on the war in Iraq has taken a disturbing turn. We are no longer discussing the morality of the war and the occupation. Rather, we are engaged in a battle of words, terminology, definitions and semantics.

Words are important. They shape our thoughts and provide a context within which all sides of an issue are interpreted. When the occupying forces insisted on calling a legitimate resistance movement “terrorists” and “Saddam Loyalists” it was designed to distort reality and frame the debate. During the initial stages of the war, from Shock and Awe to the Fallujah massacre and beyond, when major American media outlets bombarded us with slogans such as “The Battle for Iraq” and “The Fight for Iraqi Freedom” it was a naked attempt to sanctify the American cause.

When is the president going to start fighting back against the cut-and-run neocons who grabbed him by the ears back in Crawford, Texas, and hurled him into an imperial war of occupation in the Middle East at the first opportunity, no matter how unrelated or irrational?

Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Kenneth Adelman, Michael Rubin, David Frumm and their media collaborators are cutting and running from the catastrophe in Iraq faster than a Crow scout at the Little Bighorn.

The same anti-government brain banks that initiated the evisceration of public education on a platform of accountability deserve nothing less than to be crucified on their own cross. They spent a year basking in the glow of power, esteem and corporate profits, another year decrying media for not portraying the progress of war, a third year hedging their bets with complaints about strategic planning, and six months scouting scapegoats for the inevitable collapse of their defining project.

“Are you the one?” the hero pleaded. “Did I save the world?”

“I don’t know,” the heroine replied with a sheepish grin. “I’m just a cheerleader.”

For those who are not in tune with television culture, these were the concluding words to Monday night’s episode in the hit series “Heroes.” I tuned in to check it out and, while I am not necessarily hooked, I understood the appeal.

This is the kind of world we wish we were living in.

The modern world is a complex and frightening place. There are so many horrors, threats, injustices and causes: Genocide in Darfur and the Congo, poverty, starvation, brutal oppression in Oaxaca, the sexual slave trade, the devastation of New Orleans, immigration rights, international labor, living wages, civil liberties, abortion, the sanctity of marriage, embryonic stem cell research, racial discrimination, police brutality, freedom of speech, media
responsibility, health and medical care, drug dependency, AIDS.

In an age of instantaneous information, we are inundated with life and death propositions. We are overwhelmed by the volume of human need and the raw, human instinct to care and empathize with the unfortunate.

“I think it’s a struggle between radicals and extremists and those who believe in peace.” - G.W. Bush in Vietnam, November 17, 2006

What did we learn from Vietnam? According to our president, “We’ll succeed unless we quit.” Either the president is so profound that his reasoning is beyond the comprehension of ordinary thinkers or he is something akin to an elementary school boy who forgot to do his homework.

Make no mistake: We lost the war in Vietnam – just as we have lost the war in Iraq. We lost because we deserved to lose. We were arrogant and in our arrogance, we overstepped our authority and over-estimated our power. We lost 58,000 of our warriors while inflicting genocidal destruction on an indigenous people in their own land. How else do we describe Operation Phoenix and indiscriminate carpet bombing, ultimately killing literally millions of the same people the president is lecturing today?

As a common man with a life outside of politics, I entered the world of political discourse with a cause born of the conviction that the future of American democracy depended on the emergence of an Independent Movement that could break the stranglehold of two parties dominated by the same corporate interests.

Something happened along the way that caused me to defer my primary cause. The nation was attacked, the people were terrified and the government launched a policy of aggressive war designed to capture a lion’s share of the world’s most precious resource.

Somehow, the cause of political independence – freedom from corporate governance – no longer seemed pressing. Suddenly, stopping the war machine became a moral imperative, overwhelming all other concerns.