Category | Op Ed

The Sack of Baghdad

Published on February 8, 2007 by The Sentinel

    The State of the Union address by President Bush last Tuesday was
remarkable in one respect: unless you could stay awake until the very
last sentence of the speech, you would not have heard about the state
of the American union. During the customary speech to the joint session
of Congress, the president was very subdued, speaking softly and at a
slower pace than in past speeches. The macho swagger is gone, replaced
by a simulacrum of Jackie Gleason's character, the Sad Sack.


    During the 50-plus minute speech, we heard that the
war in Iraq was not going well and that we were being urged to have
patience while he tries yet again to pacify the warring country. After
claiming that military commanders had for the last four years not
recommend an increase in troop strength in Iraq, now he intends to send
another 21,000 Army soldiers and Marines into Baghdad and the most
unruly of all Iraqi provinces to try to bring order out of chaos. The
outgoing generals in charge in Iraq told Congress in November that it
was not necessary to insert new troops. The increase is not being
called for by the Joint Chiefs of the military services. Rather, it is
the idea of a military historian and other "advisors" to the president.
With Congress, including many Republicans, indicating its lack of
support for the president's war plan, the president plans to go ahead,
exhibiting a tragicomic behavior reminiscent of Don Quixote tilting at
windmills.

    When I started thinking about writing this column on
Wednesday, I thought of comparing President Bush's war planning and
execution to one or more of the great tragedies found in literature.
But I found to my dismay that Nicholas Kristof beat me to it with his
column in the "New York Times," comparing the president and his war to
Aeneas and, ultimately, to Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. In the case of
the unnecessary and obviously tragic Iraq war, with brutal consequences
for Iraqis, Americans, and the whole Middle East, comparing the
president to other tragic protagonists of history has become a too
obvious a trick for writers. This "stay-the-course" president has truly
become more comedic than tragic. Jackie Gleason and Miguel de Cervantes
provide a better mirror for reflecting upon the state of the war, along
with the state of America in the world.

    There are many apt comparisons of President Bush to
literary comic figures. Let's start with Aristophanes. Rather than
depicting Socrates in Cloud Cuckoo Land, far more appropriate occupants
of that farcical place would be President Bush and the whole White
House staff trying to find a rationale that would be acceptable to the
American public for going to war with Iraq in the first place. Further,
it would be amusing to see a modern version of "Lysistrata" featuring
the non-military, but very hawkish, types now inhabiting the West Wing.
Would they even notice that Lysistrata and her friends had a boycott in
place?

    Shakespeare would have had material for a long
series of histories, comedies and tragedies based on the Bush
Administration over the last six years. Imagine the president and his
team in "Julius Caesar." General Powell would be stabbed in the back -
but would refuse to respond with "et tu Bushe." Bush would be a great
model for King Lear, unable to save either himself or his disrespectful
son. And of course, "Alls Well That Ends Well" remains a title that
could not have been applied to the W era. And I wonder what the Bard
would have done with Mr. Bush's new favorite line, "I am the Decider."
Hubris leading to the certain fall.

    Henry Fielding would have had a grand time depicting
the early years of George Bush junior. His Yale days would have made
Tom Jones blush. His business career could have inspired a second
hilarious volume.

    While it is easy to get carried away with the
unfortunate comedic aspects of the presidents current predicament,
there is, alas, nothing funny about it for the American people. Just
like the individual actions of the Sad Sack, the action of the
president and his administration are easily seen as comedy. But in the
end, we are left crying rather than laughing, knowing that it could
have been so different.