Think of the Iraq war as an old man.
This old man would like nothing more than to go out in a blaze of glory. But his life is dominated by fights with a sister in law, and as he shuffles around his thoughts frequently turn melancholy as he thinks back to when he was young, full of piss and vinegar and the world was his red, white and blue oyster.
“You goddamned blowhard!” screeches the sister in law. “You wasted all those goddamned years! You never did what you said you were gonna do and now that you’re finally doin’ it it’s too goddamned late to make any difference to anyone, let alone your long-sufferin’ family!”
The old man is tempted to give the crone a pop in the kisser, but instead mutters barely comprehensible imprecations and wonders if his bladder will hold out until it’s time to take the paratransit bus back to the Crawford Convalescent Center. But under the medals on the breast of his frayed dress uniform jacket he knows in his heart that she is right:
Instead of hunkering down and working hard, he wasted years bragging that he had the Biggest You Know What on the playing field and calling everyone who didn’t agree with him an unpatriotic coward.
Alas, it is this analogy that comes to mind as we slouch toward the Bush administration’s September “progress report” on the Iraq war and the lead-pipe cinch certainty that despite signs of some progress on the battlefield, what ultimately is the most important kind of progress – Iraqi political reconciliation – is as dead as the once limber timber between the old man’s legs.
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