It’s really instructive that the drama of the current campaign is deemed to be so crushingly relevant. The near lynching of ABC for its temerity in asking the Crown Prince about things any other candidate would surely endure? It seems to reflect more on his irrational adoration than anything else. We’ve even fallen for the attention in posts below.
Yet in truth, we should all perhaps take a step back. And ask ourselves — isn’t this a mosquito bite in the larger span of time? Won’t the details of this campaign itself disappear faster than John Kerry’s desperately wooden attempts to mimic spontaneity? Isn’t Gary Will’s breezy comparison of the Crown Prince to the greatest president in U.S. history a bit much? . Even Petraeus’ lack of candor regarding the Iraqi Army’s abysmal performance in Sadr City doesn’t merit a footnote in, as Ross Johnson (so memorably portrayed by James Garner) said, “the sands of time.”
We know, for example, that Vietnamization failed as an overall policy. Particular engagements in its failure are ignored by history’s cold and remorseless prism. (We will note, however, the lives lost and sacrificed here). So with U.S. strategic failure in Iraq. History may invoke Vietnam’s failure in a short kaleidescope: the Tet execution, innocents fleeing napalm and the helicopter. A couple of paragraphs in the not too far distant future given the Cold War’s outcome. And even then, more likely than not, in sociological books looking at hippies, Woodstock, the Haight and a summer of love.
We can all submit our favorites for the Excellent Adventure in the Sands.
Yes, it’s true that Iraq itself is a more profound historical matter than Vietnam. And that personalities such as the Warlord, Cheney, Rumsfeld and General Jello exerted decisive impact. But let’s be candid. The war’s presence (or looming presence) in the campaign is also a sideshow. All of the devastating effects of its launch can not be changed. Regardless whether the U.S withdraws in a year, 5 years or 10 years. The impact now is on the volunteers who sacrifice while the nation shops. “Judgment” who said what (true for all candidates, a fact suppressed by many in the besotted media) — a blip. All the damage already is on the balance sheets: the war’s genesis, deceptive inducement, catastrophic diplomatic ineptitude (continued with a blank smile by Cher Condi), and a supine armed forces knowingly led to its exhaustion, failure and near destruction. That train is long gone.
Cheney and Rumsfeld’s international coercive politics will not be tolerated or even possible again. Their “ram and cram” (here is what you are going to eat, today, Dearest Darling Virginia)) to Old Europe is already in the distant past (beyond chronological years). We are not fans of Joe Nye’s deification over “soft power” (such an obvious concept for him to be given a de facto “trademark”). Yet it is without doubt that the U.S. destroyed forever the century old mythos of America as benign hegemon. A new president reaching out will not change the global perceptual damage. That dream is gone out of the corner of the eye. The Warlord succeeded in one thing: he took us down to becoming just another declining Great Power.
