'Twas a valiant effort, but the fact is that cheerleaders do not win games and a bull horn and a flight-suit do not make a commander-in-chief. Though the cow-girls may be effective in distracting the crowds in the stands, it's the action on the field that determines the result of the game. And in Iraq, as it was in Vietnam, it's "game over" and all that's left is to hand the turf over to the cleaning crew.
Our cheer-leader in chief may still be hyped, giving it one more yell and leaping into the air to impress and entertain the press, but this game is done, and the U.S. has now lost two must-win encounters in a row. Clinton took the nation across that bridge into the 21st Century and the Bush/Cheney team managed to insure that there was nothing but smoke and mirrors on the other side.
The question is how could the U.S. be so wrong, twice? Why is it that the lessons of Vietnam all got lost? How could we forget so soon that people who still get around on foot cannot be defeated by dropping bombs on them from the air; that destroying the forests or the cities where they hide just scars the land, leaving the people even more determined to resist the invaders?
It's become almost a convention to decry the loss of the world's good will after the attacks of 9/11 but that good will is largely an illusion or, at best, a temporary resurgence of affection for an America that had been squandering for decades the stature it had earned in the Second World War. Vietnam wasn't the only occasion when the nation's reputation for coming to the aid of the invaded was over-thrown in favor of becoming the invader. There were also the countries of the Caribbean, of which the delegation of Negroponte to Iraq reminds us, though their permanent occupation turned out not to be a big issue.
Perhaps that's the problem--a series of low-key invasions led to the conviction that murder on a large scale would not be resisted either. And then, of course, it was to the competitors' advantage to have America, prompted in part by an exageration of their prowess, waste her youth and her treasure on fruitless adventures. That the Soviets got their comeupance in Afghanistan isn't nearly as impressive now that the warlords are ascendant again.
When you come right down to it, trying to compete with warlords by calling oneself "war president" and dubbing the troops "war fighters" in a global war on an emotional reaction (terror) doesn't make it so. The fact is that unless it's declared by the people (through their representatives in Congress) and managed by the generals, a military intervention is not a war.What's happening in Iraq is vandalism, pure and simple. The land is being reduced to rubble because there is no other team to engage and frustration needs an escape.
So, there's no war to be won and, since Saddam's surrender, no game either. All there is in Iraq is another loss of pride, prestige, treasure and trust, which it may well take to the end of this century to rebuild. The New American Century was a mirage in the deserts of the Middle East that's gone up in smoke in the cities of Iraq.
Posted by Hannah at December 20, 2005 06:41 AM