A bridge too far: Iraq and the American mind

There’s a question that comes to mind about American voters each day that I visit the invaluable Today in Iraq for the latest disturbing updates in America’s open-ended misadventure. It’s the same puzzle that came to mind as Jeanne D’Arc relayed Paul Krugman’s piece on the deteriorating situation in Iraq, and when I read about the National Intelligence Estimate stating that our prospects in that sad country range from not-real-good to cataclysmic.

Is anybody here paying attention?

Many people are not connecting the dots when it comes to Iraq, not correlating the data that paints such a gloomy portrait both of Iraq’s future and our ability to materially affect that future. The Bush administration encourages such self-deception, delivering optimistic pronouncements and empty homilies like “freedom is on the march”. Such is the “steady leadership” of a president anxious to gloss over strategic fallacies and tactical blunders. The absence of an honest report on an American course of action in Iraq is so glaring that even some Republicans have expressed dismay.

It’s always been assumed that a free press serves as a check on the kind of mendacity dished up by the White House, but the media’s traditional role of watchdog has gone largely abandoned. While a handful of newspapers have offered tepid apologies for parroting the administration line in the past, the various television networks continue to deliver condensed and uncritical accounts of the daily horrors in Iraq - and it’s television that informs the majority of the electorate. Little wonder that many Americians can’t bridge the gulf between what they think they know about Iraq and the reality on the ground. Like dwellers in a country of the blind, they don’t even see the gulf.

For George Bush, the devil truly lies in the details. As he continues to stonewall on the hard facts and soft planning regarding Iraq, it remains to John Kerry to press him on the particulars. Only that kind of exposure will communicate to voters the absence of a viable plan for Iraq, and the imperative of ousting the “leadership” that brought us to this sorry state.