Mirage.

Dubya Bush likely received a valuable political lesson from his father, but may have been only half listening. "War will make you popular," I can imagine the old man saying, "...so long as it's short and successful." Junior probably wandered off about when he heard the "so long." As a result, the younger Bush shares his father's love of bombing and invading other countries, but lacks George Senior's horse-sense about picking the right fights - namely, easily winnable ones. Hence Operation Iraqi Fiefdom and, in effect, the war in Afghanistan as well, which by any reasonable standard is also a dismal failure in achieving the original stated objective (i.e. destroying al Qaeda and capturing/killing Bin Laden). So... how do you finesse such spectacular under-achievements? Well, if you're none too subtle and you have a very low opinion of the masses, you move the goal posts. And you do it again and again. That's certainly the modus operandi in both of these wars, but particularly in Iraq, where six month strategies stretch into 18 months with barely a word from the president on the last set of "benchmarks" left unmet.

Perhaps it's just Dubya himself, the substandard student, the frat-boy drunkard, never making the grade but expecting promotion nonetheless (and seldom encountering disappointment in that regard). It could be that he simply doesn't understand what objectives are. But I think the problem goes far beyond this one man. We have to confront the likelihood that if this war had gone successfully and ended quickly, it would have been popular even with the same odious goals and bogus rationales. Sure, I know... that's like saying, "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon." But this war would have been wrong even if it had been short and easy. It would also have been enthusiastically supported by something like a majority of Americans, and maybe a far greater proportion. Remember Panama, Grenada, and "Desert Storm." Kill a few thousand locals and we're standing tall. Everybody waving their little flags.

That makes me wonder about us, quite frankly. Do we really need to be directly connected to suffering before we recognize it for what it is and act accordingly? Does the dead person have to be a relative or a friend or a close neighbor for us to give a shit? Perhaps. I remain convinced that the American people have the power to stop the Iraq war if we insist upon it. It just hasn't hit most of us yet, so we ignore it. We are so quiet about our distaste for the war that the Bush administration has actually felt bold enough to abandon the fiction that our presence in Iraq is a short-term necessity. Indeed, they have started talking in terms of a permanent military presence in that country. Now... this, of course, was manifestly obvious from the beginning, and they have been building permanent bases there for four years, but until now they've at least softly denied that there was an intention to stay permanently. Not anymore, apparently. Likely we'll be presented with the mirage-like possibility of troop reductions - Petraeus's announcement of next spring's drawdown like it's something new; Gate's vague suggestion of further reductions by the end of next year.

Question is, when do we get to zero? Answer: never. They didn't take Iraq just to leave it later. They want to stay, and only the American people can derail that policy.

luv u,

jp