Senioritis.

We're dropping bombs on a ghetto. That is the kind of triumphant mission the Iraq war has devolved into - using high-tech air-delivered munitions on people who live on less than a dollar a day, hitting hospitals, killing children, all by accident (of course), though how you can drop bombs on a densely populated slum and not presume that you're going to kill innocent people is beyond my understanding. (By the standards established at Nuremberg, this doesn't hold any water as an excuse.) We're also dropping bombs on Somalia, the other other war - the one in which we took the side of an invader, the repressive government of Ethiopia, and played a key role in bringing Somalia back to the brink of famine and chaos. The UN and NGOs are issuing warnings about hunger in that sorry object of our attentions. They are also putting out grim advisories on Gaza, where relief programs are being stymied by the siege Israel is imposing on that territory's citizens, cutting off fuel supplies at a time of critical need... with our full support, of course.

This is looking more and more like a war on the poor. Much as Bush, McCain, and other madmen try to make this out as a titanic struggle against fanatics set on destroying our way of life, this global conflict always seems to target the destitute, the powerless, and the inconvenient. If it were just a matter of poor folks counting for nothing in the eyes of the powerful, that would be bad enough. But this is too consistent with past practice in conflicts dating back to European colonialism for this to be characterized as collateral injury. When the disenfranchised have leaders who do not toe the imperial line, it is the rank and file who pay the price. In Vietnam, we targeted peasants whose siblings, cousins, parents, neighbors, etc., belonged to the National Liberation Front. Same type of thing in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s - Drain the pond and the fish will die. Now it's Iraq's turn. Say what you want about Al Sadr, he's more of an Iraqi nationalist than anyone in the U.S.-supported government. He wants foreign troops out - that's why we hate him.

Rest assured, our president is thinking very, very deeply about the implications of this policy. ("We're killing them," he was recently heard to say.) He represents the worst case of senioritis I have ever seen, and I've seen a few. Far from "sprinting to the finish," Bush is drifting through his last year, letting the dishes pile up in the kitchen sink, watching the lawn go to hell, and saving his dirty laundry for the trip home. Just bobbing along, not a care in the world. Let me tell you, friends - there's going to be one hell of a party chez Bush when January 21 gets here... get your tickets now. As a warm-up, Dubya will continue to lob explosives at the neediest, building separation walls around Sadr City, and sending his legions into that sprawling slum that is home to 2.5 million - close to 10% of the total Iraqi population. No party for them.

And no party for us, either. Don't think this will stop when Dubya lands in Crawford.

luv u,

jp