New York Times to America:Stay the course in Iraq

[JohnyCanuck]

New York Times to America: Stay the Course in Iraq

By David Bromwich

On Sunday March 16, the Times Week in Review observed the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war with two separate commemorations: an essay by John Burns (former chief of the Times Baghdad bureau) that looks back from the devastation of 2008 to the hopes of March 2003; and a symposium on the progress of war, with short comments by nine strategists, pundits, officials, and soldiers.

Burns wrote his piece in a mood both chastened and festive, and he begins with an awestruck rhapsody on the "shock and awe" bombings -- "40 minutes, followed by a break, and then another 40 minutes" -- a new kind of evening at the Cineplex. Even "Iraqis yearning for their liberation," writes Burns, "called it, simply, 'the air show.'"

Yearning. What a weight of paternalism that word conceals. How many Iraqis exactly did Burns hear speak of the destruction of a sizable portion of their city and its infrastructure as "the air show"? Was this the expression used by Iraqis who saw their friends or relatives killed in the bombing? His repetition of the phrase suggests an utter dissociation of moral judgment from aesthetic pleasure -- a tendency given free rein when he passes to a hushed reverence at "the sheer, astonishing, overwhelming demonstration of power, more like an act of God than man." Whatever truths he may have told in the past, John Burns will surely be remembered for that sentence, so charmed and so light-headed, so far beyond truth and falsehood.

John Burns is English; but he writes here largely as a friend of Americans and a comforter. All of his presentation is designed to persuade American readers that the Iraq war has been a tragedy of good intentions. And yet, to judge our own intentions against what we suppose to be their imperfect fulfillment, is a way of thinking that leads back to self-justification. A saner way of judging anyone (including ourselves) is to infer the content of the intentions from the content of the actions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/new-york-times-to-_b_91995.html

[Why Syzygy]

1. I'm gonna

kick this so I can find it tomorrow. Strange.

[jimshoes]

2. The people who planned and

started this war are no sooner going to give it up than a junkie is going to willingly give up his heroin habbit. They like it too much. We have got to make them quit for their and our own good somehow.