Breaking the Iraq stalemate

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Breaking the Iraq stalemate
By Gary Kamiya


Sept. 18, 2007 | The Iraq war has moved into a weird purgatorial endgame. Almost no one believes in it anymore, but it keeps going. Americans keep dying, Iraq continues to fall apart, there is no end in sight, but nothing changes. Much of the country wants the war to end, but the political system is deadlocked. As George W. Bush's presidency winds down, there will be a crucial struggle between two opposed forces: inertia vs. outrage, resignation vs. engagement. At stake is not just what we do in Iraq but a deeper question: Do we care?

If history holds, the war will just keep rolling along as an anesthetized nation watches dumbly from the sidelines. Bush has succeeded in making an endless, pointless war seem normal. He just won another tactical victory, convincing wavering GOP politicians to sign off on his stay-the-course policy. A great lassitude seems to have descended over the country. The debate has gone on for too long, and the outcome is always the same. No one even wants to think about it anymore. The war is invisible.

But beneath the surface, something may have changed. Most Americans have been skeptical of Bush's war and everything he has said about it for a year or more. Still, they have entertained hope that the situation in Iraq would improve. Bush's "surge" was his last gambit: Everyone knew that there were no more troops to throw in. It had to work. Now that it is clear that it didn't, there is nothing else Bush can do.

This is an unprecedented situation. Bush always had another trick up his sleeve, another milestone to point to, another winning tactic to propose. But he has run out of tricks. The thing he dreaded most has come to pass: He is now completely at the mercy of events in Iraq.

Of course, Bush was always hostage to the harsh reality of Iraq. But he was able to counter that reality by invoking his master narrative about how Iraq was the front line of the war on terror, a battle of good vs. evil, a crucial battle on which the fate of the West depended. Even though Americans increasingly rejected that narrative, it had enough resonance to perform its function. At least Bush came across as consistent.

Now Bush's grand war story has not only been discredited by reality, he himself has been forced to adjust it in ways that make him look both hypocritical and powerless. His aura as an aggressive winner has been destroyed. This fact has not sunk in yet, but it could lead to the final erosion of American support for the war.


Rest of article at: http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/09/18/iraq_stalemate/