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Bad Sportsmanship

After reading this (via Ross), I was reminded at once of the following scene from Brazil: INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the government is winning the battle against terrorists? HELPMANN: Oh yes. Our morale is much higher than theirs, we’re fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them […]

After reading this (via Ross), I was reminded at once of the following scene from Brazil:

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the government is winning the battle against terrorists?

HELPMANN: Oh yes. Our morale is much higher than theirs, we’re fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them for six. I’d say they’re nearly out of the game.

INTERVIEWER: But the bombing campaign is now in its thirteenth year.

HELPMANN: Beginner’s luck.

I have no doubt that future administrations might try to perpetuate the war in Iraq, and I have equally little doubt that the media would, for the most part, roll over and accept this tyrannical imposition on our country just as they did when the Iraq war started.  We must be “responsible,” after all.  Mustn’t withdraw “precipitously,” you see.  Mustn’t do anything that would indicate that we are still, at some minimal theoretical level, self-governing citizens of a republic.

In fact, I think Mr. Robb is entirely right on the military matters he discusses, but does not judge correctly what the political implications of an indefinite continuation of the Iraq war will be.  It is because the war cannot be resolved in any traditional way that will make it politically impossible for it to garner meaningful public support for much more than another two or three years.  Our debates about progress and benchmarks in 2007 will seem quaint and ridiculous if in two years things are much as they are today, and I see little reason to think that the situation will be any better.  If it does not end in 2009, the incumbents will suffer badly in ’10.  If the next President does not end the war, he (or, perhaps, she) will not be re-elected, the successor will end it and will have likely also campaigned on such a platform.   

Pro-military and hegemonist pols will not continue to permit the wreck of the Army that a continued presence in Iraq would entail.  That will crack the base of the war’s support.  A couple more years of this, and you will finally have the open defection of many reliably internationalist politicians who will come out strongly against the war.  The public will grow weary of the futility of the entire exercise, even though most of them don’t know anyone who is fighting overseas.  Some event will dramatically symbolise just how pointless the Iraq war has become and will drown out the chatter from “serious” people. 

If there were some prospect of a satisfactory, victorious conclusion to the war, Mr. Robb might well be right that all of the factors he outlines would encourage prolongation of the conflict, but there is not and the public is on the verge of realising this.  The major candidates all favour continuing the war, but many of these are the same people who judged the original question of the invasion so poorly.  Their judgements are not sure signs of anything, except their own brazen complicity.

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