The central problem with selling the War on Turr ™ as an indefinite proposition is that the only people who seem to be fighting it are the soldiers themselves and George W. Bush.
We don’t seem like a nation at war. What do we conserve? What do we sacrifice? Where are the gas-rationing tickets? Our neocon friends have decided to create a state of simultaneous war/not-war. We are supposed to tune in to Dear Leader and get the bejesus scared out of us, then turn off the tube and buy more stuff with which to soothe our terrorized consumer-souls. We are at war, but with none of the muss and fuss that characterized our past conflicts, which demanded actual sacrifice and awareness. The only thing we seem to sacrifice, and that at a numbed, televised distance, is the lifeblood of young Americans.
So when I read this:
President Bush on Wednesday sought to bolster his argument that terrorism in Iraq poses a threat to the U.S., offering details from previously classified intelligence to underscore his warning that the war was at a "pivotal moment."
I felt as if I was reading a dispatch from some alternate universe, or from some other country, where people are at war. I don’t know about you, but things ain’t feeling particularly "pivotal" around here, unless you count my need to remove sheetrock from my recently flooded basement as "pivotal."
Anyway. These here neocons, conservatives, fundies, and what-have-yous are facing a pivotal moment of their own. Their need to sell a war while demanding none of the domestic trappings which usually accompany it (we’ve even cut taxes while we’re at war, for heaven’s sake) has brought them to a unique juncture. Nobody’s buying the fear thing anymore, because we’ve all done as Bush asked and returned to life as normal, at least those of us who aren’t directly connected to the military. We’ve seen no caskets, no funerals, no sacrifice. We don’t feel like we’re at war, so why should we believe it when W breaks out the air-raid siren and dons his crash helmet? Something terrible could well happen, but the boy who cried wolf ain’t scaring anybody. This is bad on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start.
And it’s also worth noting that the intelligence Bush broke out to get us all way-scared is two years old. Which is kind of coincidental, when you notice that Dear Leader, who, at his most recent press conference told NBC’s David Gregory that we had better believe Dear Leader or Gregory’s children might be killed, also seems two years old.
