April 17, 2003 - As the Second Iraqi War winds down American Policy in the Mid-East is taking on more and more of a Through the Looking Glass quality. Arch villains Usama and Saddam either grow or shrink in menacing stature depending upon which bottle from which the Administration has imbibed that day. Word and evidence are construed to mean what ever Rumsfeld and Powell, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of the Administration, choose that they will mean that day. The absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction proves the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The UN Security Counsel was relegated to the position of the Queen of Hearts jury when it was asked to give its verdict now and have the trial later while the Queen shouted, “Off with their heads!” and all the time invoking The Rule of Law. “Who cares for you”, said Alice, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards.” Sure enough her prediction came true as someone in Central Command gave Saddam and his hierarchy over to a full deck of 55 ranked from the Ace of Spades right down to the Joker.

One Hundred Fifty Six American and British soldiers are dead. From 1,200 to 1,800 Iraqi civilian deaths and an un-tallied count of Iraqi military casualties have resulted from the Baghdad Blitzkrieg. But those lives, as precious as they all are, pale before the most significant casualty of the Second Iraqi War – America’s stature in the eyes of the world. Never again will the United States be seen as an honest broker for peace because in stepping into the looking glass we have let ourselves be seen as the prime illustration of Orwell’s distortion of reality. Outside of the United States, and to a great many people within our polyglot nation, our government has become the personification of Big Brother. We have destroyed our own claim to be the moral example to the world.

Increasingly Tony Blair is becoming George Bush’s Winston – not Churchill but the formerly loyal servant of Big Brother whose eyes have been slowly opened to reality. Slowly Blair is coming to understand that War is not Peace and Occupation is not Liberation. When the Oil Ministry and the Oil Fields are protected while nothing else is secured in Baghdad; when the Federal Reserve in New York ships US Dollars to Iraq to replace Dinars as the Iraqi currency the mask is slipping badly and the looking glass growing more cloudy.

Unlike Alice we don’t seem to be awakening from this nightmare to make our way out of the looking glass. The signposts point to Damascus as Tweedledum and Tweedledee spout the same words they manipulated along the Road to Afghanistan and the Road to Baghdad.