Perennial presidential candidate John McCain made his way to a Baghdad market this week, surrounded by a phalanx of U.S. soldiers, security guards, and kevlar body armor, then returned to the nearby Green Zone (i.e. crusader castle) alive. God be praised! What are we to make of this great triumph? That the incalculable suffering of the past four years has somehow been worth it now that McCain and some other bonehead politicians can go shopping in downtown Baghdad under heavy guard? Not sure, but I think they could have done that more easily before they started this stupid war. (One can only hope they’re not planning any shopping trips to Tehran in the near future.) It’s obvious that McCain is playing to the idiot Republican base – those folks that would support Bush if he knifed their grandchildren in front of them. And the administration, desperate for any sign of success in Iraq, is more than glad to glom onto the senator’s grandstanding.

Watching all this, you have to think that our leaders take us for abject morons. They assume that we remember none of the wild flourishes of rhetoric with which they regaled us four years, four months, or even four days ago. When we invaded Iraq, it was to advance a bold agenda of remaking the middle east, so we were told. Now the objective is holding Haifa street long enough for a senator to go sight-seeing. When the Mahdi army and the Sunni guerillas make the strategic decision to allow our troops to operate relatively unmolested in central Baghdad, we act as though we’d just defeated Pompey’s legions. For chrissake – surge or no surge, we’re only able to move an inch in that city because its inhabitants have chosen to tolerate our presence for the time being, probably in the hope that this will make us leave sooner. It’s not our city, nor will it ever be, and as a saner Republican senator recently observed, Iraq just doesn’t belong to us. Probably best to remember that as we ponder what to do next.

Perhaps there’s an opportunity for the anti-war movement in all of this happy talk. What the hell – if it’s going so well over there, why don’t we leave? Let’s call their bluff. Baghdad is safe? Fine! Everybody go home. That’s what a majority of Americans and a supermajority of Iraqis want, right? There’s one way to make everybody happy. Of course, that would bring us down to the core issue of this whole bloody enterprise – our government doesn’t want to leave Iraq. They didn’t go through all the trouble of contriving and sustaining this invasion just to be pushed out a measly four years later. For all intents and purposes, America is in Iraq to stay, which means we won’t leave until there is simply no other alternative. I happen to believe only Americans can bring and end to this, but so long as we as a nation behave as though the war doesn’t exist, it will go on and on and on.

That’s what the administration calls success. And friends… it sucks.

luv u,

jp

Things heated up this week in our serial overseas conflicts, to be sure. As of this writing, Iran is still holding some British soldiers, and there appear to be some flourishes of diplomatic activity in and amongst the public posturing. Though Bush and friends (including the ever-reliable Joe Lieberman, peace be upon him) engaged in some highly qualified pre-gloating over the “progress” being seen in Iraq as a result of the “surge”, people are still dying by the score over there. As Juan Cole points out, figures from the Iraqi government on February casualties ran somewhere around 61 deaths per day – that’s just slightly fewer than in January. Progress, Lieberman style! (What have you got for the health care crisis, Joe?) It makes you wonder if any U.S. politician really has any idea what a statistic like 60 deaths a day means in human terms.

As a consequence of this cock-brained optimism, the U.S. is alienating the few corruptible friends it has in the Arab world. One by one, Gulf states are making it known that they won’t play any role in an invasion of Iran. Even Saudi Arabia – second only to Texas in the Bush family’s desiccated heart – took the opportunity of this week’s Arab summit to call the American occupation of Iraq “Illegitimate.” Mildly put, but accurate, at least, and that was not the Saudi king’s only criticism of U.S. policy in the region. There were also a few words about that other occupation… the one that turns 40 this year. Abdullah reintroduced the Saudi plan for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, based upon Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders. Basically the same formula that’s been on the table since, well, 1967, and the basis of a longstanding international consensus on the question from which only the U.S. and Israel have consistently dissented. Bush must have seen this as a bit of a poke in the eye, particularly now that he’s staggering around, punch drunk.

Not to worry – the mainstream media, including the wildly left-radical (note: irony) NPR, have identified this solution as a non-starter, nothing new, off the table. Sure it is – because it’s the only plan that has a prayer of working. Still, it helped make for kind of a bad week for Dubya… not that he knows what a bad week really looks like. That takes being on the receiving end of his foreign policy, or being one of the poor sods tasked with carrying it out. Like most of us, Bush is pretty far removed from the experience of a National Guard member or reservist sent back on his/her third or fourth tour of duty; soldiers who’ve been wounded in Iraq, then denied proper care back home, discharged for “personality disorders” when they’ve obviously got PTSD and even serious physical injuries, some even having to pay back part of their signing bonus. Now, that’s a bad week.

All I can tell you young folks out there is – no matter how much they promise you, how bad the job market looks, how sorry your money situation is – listen to what Marvin tells you. Don’t. Sign. Up.

luv u,

jp