A Pilgrim’s Digression

http://www.washingtonpost…-2005Jan26.html

The caption to this photo as it appeared in the Washington Post is “President Bush, during a hastily called appearance in the White House briefing room, figuratively plants a “flag of liberty” in the lectern to emphasize a point of last week’s inaugural speech.”

This rather reminded me of that scene at the end of Mel Gibson’s The Patriot in which Mel “plants” the flag of liberty in the chest of the British officer who is his sworn enemy.

The President continued: “While saying he had “firmly planted the flag of liberty” in Iraq, Bush offered no tangible plans for how he would plant it in other countries, suggesting instead that the stirring words of last week’s inaugural address were meant as a statement of principles recapitulating his first-term practices.”

I take back what I said about the inauguration speech being a cut above most such rhetoric. If the President himself is going to disown or qualify what he said, then the speech is meaningless.

Seymour Hersh was on the Daily Show two nights ago (I saw the episode only last night), and he reiterated the claim he made in his article for the New Yorker, The Coming Wars. Iran is next. The next war may come as early as this summer.

Hersh cites his sources as disgruntled people within the Pentagon, but he says there is no secret about who they are in the offices of the New Yorker. His articles are always scrupulously fact-checked by New Yorker editors. He seems pretty believable to me, and of course he has not been wrong so far (he uncovered the Abu Ghraib scandal).

The Daily Show also played a clip from the Don Imus interview with Dick Cheney on Inauguration Day in which Cheney said straightfaced that the administration does not want a war in the Middle East. I guess Iraq doesn’t count.

Actually, I’m sure Cheney probably resents people calling it a war. To him, the war was won when Baghdad fell. This untidy mess we’re dealing with now is just a “police action.”

It seems unbelievable to me that more war is possible at this point, so I am withholding an endorsement of Hersh’s claims. The Administration may well want to go to Tehran, but wanting and doing are two diferent things. The Iranians seem to believe America is too tied down in Iraq, and I tend to agree.

However, Hersh said one possibility is that we might see a massive air assault against Iran. The civilian administration at the Pentagon—Hersh specifically said Wolfowitz—believes that the Iranians will rise up against their rulers, if the government can be proven weak. This seems like the same kind of magical thinking that preceded the Iraq war.

Why do intelligent people still believe this discredited idea that when attacked by America, people will not fight back, if it is within their power?

One of my favorite video games for the consoles is “Freedom Fighters,” which posits an alternative history of the United States in which the Soviet Union invades and conquers America under the pretext of “liberating” it from capitalism. It’s a fascinating game on many levels, not the least becuase of the cut scenes, in which a hot Russian news babe reads Government propaganda depicting the resistance (of which you, the player, are a part) in terms not so different from the way our media depicts the resistance in Iraq. The game is fun and slightly, perhaps unintentionally, subversive.

The lesson is, no matter our motives, there is going to be opposition. I would even question our motives … but perhaps that is beside the point right now.

Even though I question our ability to strike at Iran, other than by air, there is one disturbing bit of news which lends Hersh’s claims more credence.

Tuesday, it was reported that the Army plans to keep troop levels in Iraq at current levels (about 120,000) for two more years. If you are confused by this, so am I. If we are training Iraqi forces to take over the policing of the country, why would our troop levels need to stay the same for two more years?

There are a couple possibilities. The Lt. General who made the announcement to reporters gave as the reason for maintaining current troop levels, “We’re making the assumption that the level of effort is going to continue.” The implication is, Iraqi forces are way behind in taking up the effort to defend their country. That alone should upset quite a few Americans. The promise that Iraqis would quickly rise to the challenge of defending their American-installed democracy seems like just another idealistic Bush promise that has broken apart on the reef of reality. It could also be that the United States has always intended, but never publicly acknowledged, that it will maintain bases of operation in Iraq. That, too, should infuriate just about everyone, Iraqis and Americans alike. I’m a realist, though, and I know that Americans don’t get angry about much of anything anymore that doesn’t involve homosexuality. So I don’t expect any kind of uprising or revolution. Americans will just passively accept whatever the government and its proponents choose to do in the name of “The People.”

Now the second possibility is that the Army expects war with Iran or possibly Syria. This would be the only other reason to maintain troop strength in Iraq for two years beyond the elections on Monday and two years beyond the point at which Iraq is supposed to be a free and independent and self-defending democracy.

Idle speculation, I know. I am nothing if not idle, and so I speculate. Yet others have been speculating in the same direction. Like the shrunken head says in the most recent Harry Potter movie, “Hang on. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”