Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Have Your "WIN" Button On?
George Bush has clearly reasserted over the last few days that the whole wide world couldn't pry his fingers off of Iraq with a silver spoon.0 comments
He states that the U.S. will be in Iraq while he is in office. Period. Until he leaves office.
So we're looking at:
Until he is impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate sometime in 2007; or until he steps down orderly when his term ends in January 2009; or until he dissolves our Tri-Partite system of government and declares marshall law, at some time convenient to him. In any of these cases, THEN we'll be free and able to leave the killing fields of Mad Iraq: Thunderdome.
For now, he focuses insanely on "winning" in Iraq.
Ad nauseum, he says anyone who opposes him (i.e., the entire civilized world) doesn't want to "win." They want "the enemy" to "win." Those opponents are "losers." He only "wins." Those opponents, those "Democrat Party" people, are "wrong."
He is as fully tethered to the sands of Basra as he is to that piece of "brush" they have him "clear" repeatedly in Texas, to keep him busy during each of his half-year vacations.
John Aravosis of AmericaBlog, always one of my daily first-reads, has a good response to this dilemma today, overall.
However, John asks two questions I believe are off the mark, by accepting the words themselves, as defined by the White House, to be clear and universally embraced.
At different points in his post John asks, "But what if we can't win?" and "What if we never win?"
Both are horribly, murderously off the point.
Rather, the key questions, it seems to me, are "What does 'win' mean?" and "What the hell are they talking about?"
These are the questions that the world should demand answers to.
We know of The Fog of War, but Bush and every iteration of this administration have dealt in The Fog of Thursday. And The Fog of Monday. Only broken up by The Fog of Wednesday.
Historians will be hard-put to find ANY clear cut, unequivocal statement or stand on ANY issue within the bulk of Bush administration policy positions and communications.
The GOP has created a linguistic universe, which uses simple, common words, but is based in innuendo, equivocation and full-flown double-speak, which forces the listener to fill in all the blanks from their own viewpoints and prejudices. This is what the speaker banks on, and how they've set it up. This allows the White House (and by extention, the entire Party apparatus) to give their allies a general theme to pick up and run with; slander and destroy their opponents vaguely, making it all the harder to defend against; and always maintain the firm ground of, "(I / We) never said that." Despite all the video clip library to the contrary.
This goes far beyond Nixonian "plausible deniability" to full-bore "down the rabbit hole" policy management. If you say something hellish with a straight face every six seconds for three full news cycles, it's accepted fact.
First off, there is no "enemy."
Just 24 million people of various ethnic and religious backgrounds who really hate us. This, because our government destroyed their country so supremely, obliterating the lives they knew so utterly while "liberating" them, killing whole segments of their families in the process. Small stuff like that. Oh, and in adding insult, we've given them "deficit spending." Just so their lives never improve, and their children who missed getting killed are at least bankrupted for life.
So, in Bushspeak, what does "win" mean?
In English, what does "win" mean?
Have a clear, concise answer to that one?
Most people, I believe, would think in terms of a "surrender." Playground stuff on a global scale. We "won" WW II; Japan, Germany and Italy "lost" because they surrendered. We "lost" in Vietnam, since the North Vietnamese never surrendered. Although, we didn't actually "lose," since we never surrendered either. We just got the hell out.
When you think in terms of someone "giving," someone crying "Uncle!" it's easy to think that one or the other will be able to have bragging rights to "I beat you" or "I won."
That presupposes a clear, acknowledged opponent. In terms of warfare, that's usually an opposing king, queen, county, state or country: some other form of governmental authority which speaks for the populace. Which has the authority to commit the entire populace both to war and to laying down their arms and ceasing hostilities, accepting the dominion of the victors.
You see one in Iraq?
They had one. We destroyed that pretty easily back in 2003. As everyone, including Saddam, thought we would.
We've replaced that with cheesecloth. Dandelions are firmer.
So, a cobbled-together country the size of California that had approximately 25 million citizens before Shock 'n' Awe Night—now with a nearly toothless puppet government—has disintegrated into 24 million survivors of the greatest petrie dish of greed, stupidity, abuse, theft, incompetence, hatred, corruption, venal humanity, murder, rape and general fucked-up-ness the planet has ever experienced.
Here's the problem: before you can begin to assess who "won" and who "lost," just how do you determine that it's even over?
When you're dealing with 24 million fully armed and enraged governmental free agents—with a few war lords thrown in for fun—who signs the enforcible paper that says, "It's over"?
Update: Think of that the next time mental giants like Chris Mathews simplistically goad Gov. Howard Dean with "So, what's the Democrats' plan? Would you get out now? Hunh?" BTW, Dean held his ground and did just fine. Tweety can always use a bit of red to balance all that yellow.
It's pretty easy for most folks to tell that all is now lost. But how can you tell what it means to win? Or when you win? Or if you win. Or that you've even won?
There's no "I" in "team."
There's no "win" in "The Gates of Hell."
posted by Gotham 12:50 PM
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