The need to see progress/failure in Iraq
■"Bush Cites Gains But Sees No Cuts In Troops In Iraq: Says Talk Is Premature; President Tries to Resolve Mixed Signals After Pentagon Remarks," by Anne E. Kornblut, New York Times, 12 August 2005, p. A1■"Ohio's Marines Are Remembered And Understood," op-ed by Dan heninger, Wall Street Journal, 12 August 2005, p. A8.
Everyone in this ongoing debate wants Iraq declared either a fantastic failure or a fantastic success, when such definitions are simply impossible at any point in the process. Even in America's worst moments throughout its many decades (like the Civil War) it was never a complete failure, and even in its best moments (like WWII) it was never a complete success.
We tend to write our history like the press prefers to keep score in Washington, as in, who's up and who's down, when we were humming and when we were complete screw-ups. But the absolutes are never reached in truly pluralism. Plenty of sturm und drang, of course, and lotsa wasted motion and words, but mostly you muddle through, just like the Iraqis are today.
We tend only to see the negative, as in "How long must this war drag on?" When in reality, we should be amazed at how long we've been able to stave off a civil war in Iraq while all sides continue to negotiate toward something resembling a representative democracy.
Dan Henninger's great op-ed reminds us that American civilians tend to bitch about their wars far more than the troops ever do, going all the way back to General Washington and our revolutionary origins. Frankly, it's always been the "band of brothers" cohesion versus the turn-on-themselves citizenry. Every war we've ever engaged in ended up taking too long and costing too much compared with the expectations going in.
Somehow we bury police and firemen with real pride and gratitude with their sacrifice, but too many of us can't do the same with our similarly serving SysAdmin troops in this war on terrorism. Keeping our streets safe is seen as a noble calling, but keeping anybody else's must be cast as either over-the-top crusade or complete and utter lie foisted upon us by our corrupt leaders. There is no in-between, just the extremes of sentiment, as Henninger laments.
And when we view our interactions with the world in this way, how can we expect much better from the world outside?