Back in June, as I prepared to go on my annual vacation, I was invited out by some friends to a local watering hole for drinks and a few games of pool. Despite years of experience, good times with good friends stretched the evening out and the phrase “a few” rapidly disappeared from descriptions of both billiards and beverages. At one point I found myself engaged in a heated discussion – let’s be honest and just say it was an argument – with a woman who attends our church, on the subject of professional soccer in the United States. The debate raged over whether or not Americans really cared about soccer and if there was room for another professional sports league. To be perfectly frank, I no longer remember which side of the argument I took, and the following week the woman and I sheepishly admitted that neither of us really knew anything to speak of about soccer and, further, didn’t really care. The morning after that not particularly fateful but still embarrassing outing, I found myself wandering about the house in a daze and wishing to block the entire sordid incident from my memory.
The month of July, 2008, is quickly becoming the time when our national hangover regarding the Iraq war will set in. From the beginning I opposed this war, acting on my beliefs in every way imaginable. I marched with peace advocates in the streets – though I was often keeping company with people who shared little or nothing else in common with me. I wrote passionately on the subject and found myself backing political candidates with whom I may have disagreed strongly on other important issues, based solely on their opposition to the war. Since 2004 I continued to feel that this would be the One Issue for 2008, and that most other concerns could be safely shelved until this urgent disaster was resolved.
In the fallout since July 19, when the Prime Minister of Iraq tied John McCain’s shoelaces together, the real truth has begun to come into focus. Both Barack Obama and John McCain now have essentially the same “plan” for our future in Iraq, though they will continue in an elaborate sword dance to make it appear as if they disagree. To the disappointment of the most fervent war opponents, there will be no sudden dropping of weapons and abandonment of Iraq, with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company being led off in leg-irons to a cell in The Hague. Nor shall there be a 100 year American military presence in the country (just like Germany and Japan!) following a massive celebration at the newly erected George W. Bush Arc de Triomphe in Baghdad, with the America 2.0 government of Iraq toddling off on its first steps to fight the menace of Radical Jihad.
As we draw the curtains on this tragedy of errors, the war will indeed end – not with a bang, but a whimper. (Or perhaps a protracted whine might be more appropriate.) The troops will slowly come out, leaving Iraq much as it once was but with new faces in old, familiar positions of power. We shall be left pondering the words of Jeanette Rankin, who said, “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” There will be messy loose ends to tie up in Afghanistan, but what then? Quite likely we will be forced to return to worries about mundane affairs and cast our votes based on concerns over keeping the lights turned on and the trains running, whether or not we’ll have a job and a home next year – in short, the troubles which plague us before and after any great moment of national crisis.
I also suspect more than a few of us will be looking at each other with a bit of embarrassment over the entire affair. So… do you really think soccer will ever be as popular as baseball?