IT IS NOT HIS FATHER’S WAR

The war, we are told, is going according to plan. Whether it is from the Qatar advance headquarters of Central Command or the press briefing room at the Pentagon, military spokesmen assure us that the difficult situation that has emerged in Southern Iraq was not unanticipated and that the course of the battle is ahead of schedule. It is a case of putting the best foot forward. The ultimate issue, we are repeatedly told, is not in doubt. Saddam’s days are numbered. That is to be expected. The American people; those who embrace the aggressive posture that marks the New American Century and those who reject the New American Imperialism that it represents; expect success of American arms. The Pentagon is trying to satisfy those expectations in the briefing room if not on the ground. The Generals are trying to recreate the “gee whiz” atmosphere of the 1991 video game war briefings with videos of smart bomb impacts. Twelve years of the advance of technology infiltrating into every aspect of our daily lives has converted “gee whiz” into “ho hum”. Even our vacations trips are planned in detail by a mapping program and progress on the route is tracked on a laptop by our GPS navigating system. That is why it is news when a smart bomb turns dumb and hits an unintended target and almost incomprehensible when a supply column takes a wrong turn and blunders into a disastrous ambush.

The picture we get of this war doesn’t come from the briefing rooms; it comes from the round-the-clock real time video dispatches live from the battle front. CNN, FOX, CNBC, and MSNBC program the war as entertainment with varying degrees of jingoism to suit their demographics. We think we are seeing the real war in real time. We aren’t. We are seeing only the small pieces of the puzzle within range of the embedded camera’s eye in tiny slices of time. No amount of jingoistic puffing can disguise the fact that the Iraqis have proved a more effective and dedicated enemy than even the most cynical amongst us thought possible. The President is said to be exasperated as the press questions whether the plans for this war were overly confident and ambitious.

The fact is that the Administration sowed the seeds of this overly critical approach to the progress of the war. In the long period of ersatz diplomacy leading up to the opening rounds of this war the Administration sold the overwhelming force of American military power too strongly. Calling upon memories of the First Iraqi War and the Afghan campaign they sold the idea that from the first bombs to the collapse of Iraqi resistance would take only a week to ten days. Evoking images of the 1944 liberation of Paris and the reception enjoyed in Kabul we expected the Iraqi people to greet our columns with flags and flowers. Instead they met RPGs and AK47s.

Each day that the war goes on, each day that there are reports of more American casualties, each day that the Iraqi regime survives the Administration is farther away from achieving the primary objective of the exercise – the vote in November 2004. The President is frustrated because he is learning a hard lesson. This ain’t his father’s war.