Thursday
8/27/03
So What Exactly is Major Combat?
I have no doubt that the Bush administration will be quietly ignoring a very sad milestone that they’ve achieved for themselves today: More U.S. troops have now died in the absence of "major combat" than did during the "war" itself. What, I wonder will be their response, if there’s any at all, to such a landmark. Will the media ask for any sort of comment? Will the media wonder if perhaps the White House has any sort of message for the troop’s families? Will anyone wonder aloud if, perhaps, just maybe, we’re not on the right course?
I suspect we know better. The so-called liberal media has long since been cowed by this administration’s united front that shifts so easily between smug dismisivness and the shameless portrayal of many questions as, in order of severity: irrelevant, impertinent, inappropriate, and dangerously unpatriotic.
One of the masters of this front is Donald Rumsfeld. I must admit that before this nightmare of perpetual combat began with the hunt for Ossama bin Laden (Who? Huh?), Donald Rumsfeld struck me as a refreshingly plain spoken, no-nonsense sort of guy. A guy known for his love of precise language. Plainspoken and nonsense-free are of course two fine attributes when one has a clear agenda and nothing to hide. These qualities are, however, a double-edged sword when things aren’t going so well. We have seen this man scold reporters for using the terms "guerrilla warfare" and "quagmire", only to be embarrassed by the truth later on. He dismisses entire lines of questioning out of hand, and, as Gary Trudeau has so enjoyably noted in a recent series of strips, he allows his increasingly uncontrollable frustration to quash even the semblance of a dialog with those who would dare hint that things are less than rosy.
So where does this leave us? What new horrible milestones will we have to endure before the spell is broken and middle America stands and says "Enough"? I really don’t know, but in what was a pretty subdued country before we got there, it still looks like Major Combat to me.
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So What Exactly is Major Combat?
I have no doubt that the Bush administration will be quietly ignoring a very sad milestone that they’ve achieved for themselves today: More U.S. troops have now died in the absence of "major combat" than did during the "war" itself. What, I wonder will be their response, if there’s any at all, to such a landmark. Will the media ask for any sort of comment? Will the media wonder if perhaps the White House has any sort of message for the troop’s families? Will anyone wonder aloud if, perhaps, just maybe, we’re not on the right course?
I suspect we know better. The so-called liberal media has long since been cowed by this administration’s united front that shifts so easily between smug dismisivness and the shameless portrayal of many questions as, in order of severity: irrelevant, impertinent, inappropriate, and dangerously unpatriotic.
One of the masters of this front is Donald Rumsfeld. I must admit that before this nightmare of perpetual combat began with the hunt for Ossama bin Laden (Who? Huh?), Donald Rumsfeld struck me as a refreshingly plain spoken, no-nonsense sort of guy. A guy known for his love of precise language. Plainspoken and nonsense-free are of course two fine attributes when one has a clear agenda and nothing to hide. These qualities are, however, a double-edged sword when things aren’t going so well. We have seen this man scold reporters for using the terms "guerrilla warfare" and "quagmire", only to be embarrassed by the truth later on. He dismisses entire lines of questioning out of hand, and, as Gary Trudeau has so enjoyably noted in a recent series of strips, he allows his increasingly uncontrollable frustration to quash even the semblance of a dialog with those who would dare hint that things are less than rosy.
So where does this leave us? What new horrible milestones will we have to endure before the spell is broken and middle America stands and says "Enough"? I really don’t know, but in what was a pretty subdued country before we got there, it still looks like Major Combat to me.
