Desiring Machine

Ever since the news of Zarqawi’s death came over the wires I have been trying to make sense of it and what it really means. On the face of it it seems like one of these convenient and felicitous conincidences that favors the administration’s “stay the course” rhetoric. But it is hard to not feel cynical. I genuinely detest the cynicism that we live in today. I lay a lot of this at the feet of our president. He has through his policies and rhetoric made this nation cynical, and further alienates the voting population. I guess this has both potentially positive (real political resistance) and negative (pessimism and voter decline) effects. As it goes I am not a huge conspiracy buff and I hate to see complex issues reduced down to simple conspiracies, but the current administration doesn’t seem to care much, and is rather blase about addressing these concerns. Several years ago when Clinton ordered the airstrike on a Sudanese “chemical/perfume” factory there were numerous cynical accusations that it was merely a ploy to deflect attention during the height of the Lewinsky scandal. This never felt right and seemed to be a very crude cynical criticism. But perhaps there is something to this trick. Today the Bush administration relies on many different rabbits to pull out of the hat at a moment’s notice to modulate and motive public opinion in a specific direction. We have seen it with the staged “mission accomplished”, the grand display of the death of Hussein’s sons, the triumphalism surrounding the capture of Saddam Hussein himself, and most recently the news about Zarqawi’s death. And whenever opposition to the War starts to gain steam something like this comes along. The most sinister thing in all this is the administration’s constant assertion that things are not as bad as they seem. The claim is always the same: Bias. The “wrong” pictures are being shown. This all really begs the question, if things are really going so well why is there not a clear plan of withdrawal and a plan to hand things over to the Iraqi people? In my mind there are only a few explanations for this:

1.) Things are not really going well and our troops are genuinely needed to police the nation. Thus the administration is in a contradiction.

2.) Things are progressing fine but the administration has no intention of withdraw or changing course because the war and it continuous drama deflects the American public from the abysmal domestic agenda of this administration.

3.) Things are what they are in Iraq but the administration has ambitions of empire in the region so withdrawal is a non starter towards that end.

4.) some configuration of the above.

And so this week we are greeted with the death of “master terrorist” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The problem is that this is just one man, and regardless, doesn’t appear to change a damn thing. It might make a nice talking point, or a feather in Bush’s cap as he gleefully checks one more off his “list of terrorists” he keeps in his desk. The problem is that this kind of public drama is only really useful in elections and voting season. The administration can stand ten feet tall and declare that they are protecting you the American public from boogeymen. But I have a hard time believing that this is going to play that well for the administration. They still face tough questions. If the war is going that well where is the real evidence? Why are we still there? Frankly I have not been tuned into the TV or the mainstream media for quite awhile so I have no viceral feeling of how this Zarqawi news is playing on the 24 hr blather circuit. The real interesting fact to me is that we are quickly approaching a harrowing metric in the war. We are hovering around 2500 dead American solidiers in Iraq, most estimates put the number of deaths of the collapse of the World Trade Center around 2700. So when those two numbers converge we really are left with a meaningful question, is it worth it? At this point even if Bush presents us with Bin Laden’s head on a silver plate it won’t be enough. Bottom line is that the administration has squandered any little credibility it had. And token victories of the capture or death of specific individuals does little to convince me that we are making meaningful progress in Bush’s war.

But like I said I am still trying to make sense of the significance of Zarqawi’s death. One person who seems to be making sense out of all this is Geov Parrish in his recent column Another day, another martyr.

The whole thing continues to leave a pit in my stomach. I will just finish by posting one of the most heart wrenching photos I have seen from the war. Still makes me quiver and cry to this day. This is life during war time and as someone much more poetic than me once said: “this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around”.