Attention, comrades: Things are much better than our sorryass reality would indicate

The swindle continues, reports the New York Times. "With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has" -- don't tell me, let me guess -- "lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections."

Oh, shoot. Three-card monte is no fun when you spoil it like that.

The press could very nearly start reporting on the Iraq debacle with a journalistic transparency that exposes the honestly absurd, to wit: "Today, the Bush administration breathlessly announced another goalpost moved, another diplomatic sleight of hand, another p.r.-propaganda razzle-dazzle that transmutes yet another stunning failure into another smashing success."

Why not? Since the Bush administration is determined to debauch the American soul and corrupt every last strain of American decency with a gleeful intractability not seen since the German victory at Stalingrad, journalism might as well have a little fun, too. We're all in Bush's Orwellian sewer together, so we might as well concede defeat ... ah, impending victory.

Which is precisely, of course, what the administration is doing -- again. Its taking three, surefire and certain developments on Iraqi ground and reframing them as the daring-do of proven progress:

The short-term American targets include passage of a $48 billion Iraqi budget, something the Iraqis say they are on their way to doing anyway; renewing the United Nations mandate that authorizes an American presence in the country, which the Iraqis have done repeatedly before; and passing legislation to allow thousands of Baath Party members from Saddam Hussein’s era to rejoin the government..., largely symbolic since rehirings have been quietly taking place already.

Remember the absolute need for political "reconciliation" in Iraq -- the reconciliation that only a U.S. escalation would bring, guaranteed? Well, forget that. What Iraqis really need, says the administration now, is "accommodation," even though, oddly enough, Iraqi officials themselves insist, "We need a grand bargain among all the groups." No you don't. You're doing swimmingly well, since doing better is impossible.

And achieving the swimmingly good is so dazzling, especially when it's in the bag. The homespun swindle has even the Iraqis puzzled. The administration says with tortured angst it simply must assist them in passing a budget, to which a prime ministerial adviser said: "Every state needs a budget. It’s impossible to function without a budget. It does not need any push from anyone." One can almost see him swatting at Ryan Crocker, like a perfectly healthy grandmother who needs no assistance crossing the street.

Yet the much bigger puzzler is right here at home.

"The changing situation" in Iraq -- achieving the already achieved, that is, reports the NYT in a related piece -- "suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue. While the Democratic candidates are continuing to assail the war -- a popular position with many of the party’s primary voters -- they run the risk that Republicans will use those critiques to attack the party’s nominee in the election as defeatist and lacking faith in the American military."

Run the risk? Is there is one American soul alive who does not know with a certainty approaching a passed Iraqi budget that, no matter what happens there, "the party's nominee" here will be blistered by the GOP attack machine as "defeatist and lacking faith in the American military"?

And is there one American soul alive who doesn't know with equal certainty that the Democratic nominee will cower and equivocate in the face of that blistering fire; that the nominee will retreat from declaring with unOrwellian clarity that the noble admission of a failed and wrongheaded policy isn't synonymous with "defeatism" -- and that another year or two of this kind of success will leave no American military to have any faith in?

Yeah, that's what I thought. It's in the imperial genes -- every world power watches itself go over that cliff just up ahead, singing along the way with Orwellian self-assurance: "Things are much better than our sorryass reality would indicate."

Comments

[Hotrod]

PM,
I just got done watching PBS special on "Selling the War". We are screwed. An editor said it was no longer their "job" to point out when the Republicans are lying-it is the Democrats "job". In that case we might as well start packing up our families and get the hell out. The lies will continue unabated and the general populace will suck them in like flies drawn to horse shit.

[Sinead]

Another great one - sad but true. Thanks for writing this.

[Mooser]

Man, Mr. p.m., what a worry-wart you are! Everything, everylittle mother-lovinthing, is under control.

The current and building economic downturn will re-fill the ranks of the Army, pronto! So don't worry!

[Eric Swan]

Tragically, I fear, it is even worse than you imagine. Every thing you wrote, I think is true, BUT. the Bushies ARE achieving their goal. First they attacked Iraq, then they destroyed it, and now they are chopping it up into 3 weak minny states, and next they will grab the OIL. Maybe 30 TRILLION dollares worth. Not bad for a paltry 2 trillion dollar or so investment.

[Don Robertson, The American Philosopher]

P.M. asks, "Why not?"

Well, for one thing it's immoral to abandon such a triflingly orphaned negative sentiment to the future.

While everyone has been busy wanting to shoot someone, or attacking Bush and the War based upon a socially ineffective relative Humanitarian morality, I've been busy exploring the great heights of un-relative morality and, the newly rocketing ascendence of Categorical Knowledge, which is just now piercing the dark and peeking its bright face over the horizon like a new day's sun, or even more so, like a nighttime Space Shuttle launch observed from a mere fifty feet off the lauch pad.

Categorical Knowledge will wholly displace empirical knowledge from the usurped throne of truth.

As empirical knowledge was once to superstition, so now it is clear Categorical Knowledge is to empirical knowledge.

Honestly, I've become so immersed in this new knowledge set, Categorical Knowledge, when I read the sort of socially harmonizing rant of this article, I get pretty lost in my unattended sympathy for all the suffering.

I like the primitive sentiment, but you're missing the point.

Cheer up! There's a solution.

What we all should be doing is, very slowly we should be by our failure to purchase turning the economy around into a negative growth economy that cannot support war, empirical frauds like "cell phones can't hurt you", and suffocating the planned impetus-notions being sold to us like environmentalism being a moral monk's science that will do more good than harm, unlike every other empirical science that has ravaged humanity at every turn of the pages of history.

That's right. Boycott the U.S. of A. Shut the place down. Connect all the ghost towns between the Walmarts.

It's easy. Just stop buying all that crap. Ya know, it's possible to make pretty damned good pizza at home, and it doesn't have any spit in it unless you put it in there yourself.

In any event, keep up the good work, but look for a way out, and don't simply surrender to your predictions.

Who knows? You may turn out to be right. It all sure sounds likely enough to me, if nothing is done about it anyway.

Don Robertson, The American Philosopher

[Grahor]

Don Robertson, The American Philosopher, you have the amazing ability to befog in 3000 words what could be clearly said in 3 words.

Have you considered working for the Bush administration? People with your talent are needed there.

[Don Robertson, The American Philosopher]

Grahor-

Those who might count "3000" where there are but 300, likely see many aberrations, similarities and connections between the disparately jumbled cacophony of what they might surmise to and for themselves.

I'm not sure such an analysis is worth reading though ragardless of how briefly it may be expressed, unless perhaps it is not expressed at all?

Best!

Don Robertson, The American Philosopher