What was the big story about Iraq this week? I don’t mean Harry Reid keeping some senators up all night. More than that, it was the degree to which the U.S. military is bursting at the seams over this stupid war. I’m certain many of you saw the video of Bob Gates sobbing over the death of the Marine they called “the lion of Fallujah”, but how many have seen footage from the air war in Iraq? Show of hands… I thought not. 
That’s because it’s not being televised, just as the daily suffering of U.S. soldiers and ordinary Iraqis (now suffering at our hands non-stop since 1990) seldom makes it to our national news programs. As during the later years of the Vietnam War, the use of massive firepower is becoming a kind of consolational therapy for our political leaders and senior military commanders, as well as a sign of their increasing frustration over so persistent a policy failure as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Planners know that the clock is ticking on the Iraq project, and that they need to show “progress”, “results”, etc., and fast. So… bombs away.
Right now the focus is on September, when General Petraeus’ report is due, but they’re talking about this only because September isn’t here yet. When September arrives, they will have moved the goal posts yet again. Preliminary work for this next extension is already being laid in the public sphere – just this morning I read a news item quoting someone high in the chain of command on how they will need at least until summer of 2008 to consolidate what “gains” they have made since the beginning of the “surge” strategy (i.e. temporarily displacing insurgents to other areas of Iraq) and perhaps another 2 years. At the current rate of attrition, that could mean another 700-1500 American lives and god knows how many Iraqis. Personally, I don’t think Bob Gates has got that many crocodile tears in him. I can’t imagine what American soldiers deployed in Iraq for their third tour of duty must think when they read stories like that. One wonders if they’re reading Catch-22 at the same time. (One wonders if they would need to.)
Why, then, does Colonel Cathcart keep raising the number of missions? Well, obviously the administration did not invade Iraq just to quit it 5 short years later. (Fact is, they didn’t invade Iraq at all; only their unfortunate charges.) It is an enormous geopolitical prize, if it can be tamed, and a long-term U.S. presence (invited by a compliant Iraqi regime, of course) is what U.S. decision makers want here, even if it costs another 700, 1,500, or 3,000 American lives. Now, they will always present it as a matter of completing the job that the fallen have started, but if that “job” (created by politicians, not soldiers) is illegitimate, immoral, and extremely ill-advised, then the sooner we quit, the better. By their logic, we will never leave Iraq… which is, of course, their intention. So the dying will continue, until we decide it’s time for them to stop. Perhaps that time will only come when they start digging a little deeper to find live bodies to fill all those empty boots. Sooner or later, they will have to.
Looks like we’re in for some pretty hard-sell recruiting, friends. We’ve got ourselves a keeper.
luv u,
jp
Low bridge, everybody down. Low bridge, ’cause our driver is a clown! Man, don’t you just love those old work songs! Just the thing to take the ache out of my sorry ass.
the not so distant future). Hell, if we were to let fear stop us from doing what we need to do, we would have stopped doing anything meaningful years and years ago. So….wait a minute… maybe we are a-feared after all!
conveyance? (Perhaps with a séance?) We puzzled over this for quite a while before fortune smiled down upon us (as it always does) and placed the means of transport within our grasp. The Barge Canal! (formerly known as the Erie Canal, eighth wonder of the world… back when there were probably only about seven wonders). We made our way to the nearest marina and negotiated passage on a somewhat tired looking riverboat. (That’s right, that’s right… we didn’t have any money, so the negotiation mainly involved sneaking on board while the crew was below deck drinking their wages. Don’t look at me like that…. I’m freaking sensitive, okay?) It’s not the kind of barge you would expect to see on this superannuated waterway, but…. it’ll do, and it’s headed in the right direction.
stories were the intelligence reports about a resurgent Al Qaeda and the interim report on “progress” in Iraq. While those two stories are, by virtue of previous intelligence reports, intimately related, Sawyer and Stephanopoulos were careful to keep them in their separate silos. No chance that either of these seasoned journalists would, say, ask Michael Chertoff whether or not Al Qaeda’s new strength was further evidence that the Iraq war is spawning a new generation of terrorism, drawing more people to extremism, and alienating those people in the middle east who might otherwise harbor some affection for us. I mean, we know that this stupid war is making terrorism worse – why do we pretend otherwise? 
Even in the face of no significant progress on the “benchmarks”, Bush demands patience. That’s basically the only card he has left. He’s got nothing to lose by taking that position because… well… he’s got nothing to lose. He can’t run for president again and he knows it’s unlikely that he’ll be impeached, so he’s got the office for the next 18 months. And as long as he never admits failure, Bush can always tag the collapse of Iraq on someone else. It won’t be down to him. It will be Congress’s fault if they cut off funds and Iraq falls apart. It will be the Iraqis’ fault if the money keeps flowing but the place implodes anyway. It will be the skeptics’ fault in either case for draining the American people’s will to “stay the course.” And when he leaves office with the war still rolling lethally along, he leaves the mess to someone else who will take the blame for the ensuing disaster. For now, Bush and company are content to prolong the fiction that there can be a good outcome to this war for anyone besides Halliburton and Blackwater. If doing so kills another World Trade Center’s worth of Americans between now and the end of his term, it’s no skin off his nose.