Tuesday, December 13, 2005

It must be a different universe inside the Beltway.

So many people there keep saying the war in Iraq is a failure, a mess, a disaster, etc. Out here in the country, it looks like it's going pretty well. We haven't been there anywhere as long as we've had troops in Korea and Germany. The reactionaries are losing steadily as the people catch on to what the U.S. is trying to make happen. They are participating in democratic processes.

The only explanation is that the D.C. area is in some sort of time-space rupture where things look like our world but aren't really.

E. J. Dionne writes:
After this week's elections in Iraq, will our national debate be about what the United States should do to salvage the best outcome it can from a war policy that has been riddled with errors and miscalculations? Or will we mostly discuss how politicians should position themselves on the war?

Here's a bet on the triumph of spin. Politicians, especially Democrats, will be discouraged from saying what they really believe about Iraq for fear of offending ``swing voters.'' Slogans about ``victory'' and ``defeatism'' will be thrown around promiscuously.
See what I mean?

In the Bizarro Washington, we're losing the war in Iraq and are trying to find a way to "salvage the best outcome" we can. No war has ever existed that wasn't "riddle with errors and miscalculations," but in this warped reality, errors and miscalculations are enough to conclude that the war is lost.
The only reason America is still intact is because the USSR, Hitler and all our other enemies found that they had made errors and miscalculations and accepted defeat. Of course, the U.S. doesn't extend beyond the Mississippi, because when Custer's army was massacred, we gave up. Texas still belongs to Mexico. The issue of slavery is still debated, because after the first couple of years of the Civil War, Lincoln was convinced by all the setbacks and miscalculations that the war was lost and resigned from office. His vice-president, Andrew Johnson, saved the Union through negotiations with Jefferson Davis, both of whom are memorialized in that big monument at the other end of the Mall in Washington from the Capitol Building.

In the alternate Washington, the Japanese are fighting with the Mexicans for control of the West Coast of the continent, but the U.S. is neutral.

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