The King's War Ends

The King's War Ends (2001)

The slighest return of beauty makes you aware how deep your social wounds are, how painful it is to think continually of nothing but aggression and defense, superpowers, diplomacy, terrorism, war. Such preoccupations shrink art to nothing.
--Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back

I don't think you can win it [the war on terror].
--George W. Bush, August 31, 2004

Art sometimes shows us what we want to see and imagines the world as it should be.

And now it seems that only in art can Bush's war ever end.

In reality: The Long War.

The war which Bush now says will continue beyond his time in office.

Endless. Hopeless. Senseless.

From yesterday's Miami Herald -- "There's No Exit from This Endless War" by Joseph L. Galloway:

The war in Iraq goes on and on as we enter the fourth year, and still the Bush administration cannot define an exit strategy that should have been made plain before the first American soldier crossed the border.

[...]

Remember that this was a war urgently ordered because of the threat that Hussein would build a nuclear weapon within a couple of years, and at any minute might slime Israel and his neighbors with chemical and biological weapons. That the war would be short and sweet, or in the words of one official ''a slam-dunk.'' That it would be paid for out of the oil earnings of Iraq. That it would implant Jeffersonian democracy in the heart of the Middle East. That it was the right thing to do.

In truth, Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time against the wrong people. The administration turned valuable resources away from controlling and rebuilding Afghanistan and pursuing al Qaeda to the death.

So far it has cost us 2,300-plus American dead; 17,000-plus American wounded; tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by both sides; a bill to taxpayers of the future, our children and grandchildren, that will reach more than $400 billion this year; and a U.S. military struggling to find and keep the manpower needed for present and future combat tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We will be dealing with the consequences and fallout for a long time to come. They are the gang that couldn't shoot straight, and now they are the ones dealing with a much more dangerous situation in Iran. God help us.

Yes. God help us.

War forever and ever.

War Without End.

Amen.

~/~

Need a verbally cleansing catharsis? Check out this rinse-away-the-blues rant by Will Durst.