It's becoming increasingly difficult for war fans to argue against this kind of perspective. (Many of them will keep right on doing it, of course.) This columnist puts well what we've heard quite a bit lately. I suspect that holiday visits with family and friends gave lots of people encounters with parents of teenage children who were taking the draft as a very real immediate possibility, and things like that.
Iraq: American Reality by Bob Burnett Berkeley Daily Planet 01/07/05
Bullied by the Bush administration, the media has restricted its role, struggled each day to put a positive spin on the occupation, to suggest that victory might yet be snatched from the rabid jaws of defeat. However, the vital statistics of the war, ranging from the numbers of casualties to the barrels of oil pumped and hours of uninterr upted electrical service, tell a contradictory, somber story. The insurgency is growing—organized by four distinct organizations, we are told. It is unsafe for journalists to leave their quarters unless accompanied by an armed convoy; the road from the central airport into Baghdad is unsafe and visitors must be flown by helicopter into the Green zone. Many contractors have abandoned their projects; reconstruction has slowed to a snail’s pace. Some say that insurgents control two-thirds of the country and most of the oil-distribution system. America has lost the hearts and minds of the average Iraqi; eighty percent want us to leave.
Iraq is in free-fall, headed for civil war, and the Jan. 30 elections won’t help. The United States has staged its own harr owing reality show. Like the climber trapped because of his own recklessness, forced to choose between starving to death or cutting off his arm, America is left with only dreadful choices: Are we on the set of Survivor or Lost? Will the United States face reality and make decisions that maximize our security? Or will we blunder onward, ensnared in our own version of the Donner Party?
2 comments:
I'm reminded of one line from the movie "JFK": "is a government worth preserving when it lies to the people?"
This in effect, is what the media has done. Preserved the Bush Administration and worse, promoted its agenda in spite of the string of lies.
Do you remember in school, when the kid who never did his homework would have to fake his way through some difficult problem in front of the class -- do you recall the way he bluffed his way through -- until the moment when he realized that nobody was buying it?
Watching George Bush argue that the news that 4 provinces out of 18 in Iraq are not in any condition to support free elections (4 provinces comprising half the population of the country), and hearing him proclaim the good news that this means 14 of 18 are relatively calm, reminded me of that kid.
Actually, the film of Bush sitting in that classroom on 9/11 also reminded me of somebody ill-prepared for that moment of truth (something that must have occurred to him in the minutes that rolled by with him sitting there uselessly).
What a freakin' mess!
Can you believe this guy gets 8 years as President of the USA?
This is the answer to "Revenge of the nerds" -- this is the revenge of the guys who were too cool to do their homework.
Neil
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