Success without the suck.

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