War as Theater

Saddam Hussein has met his just reward. Richly deserved at any rate. Whether this actually makes any difference in the world - no, not likely. Josh Marshall calls it what it is - "tawdry, cheap acts ... [dressed up as].... papier-mache grandeur -- phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters". It's shabby political theater, which is about all the Bush white house has been able to muster all along. Attacking Iraq was a sideshow from the beginning - a war chosen, I say, because it could be turned into theater - there was no danger that Iraq could actually prevent us from taking them over; the odds are good that no one really thought Hussein had any means (WMD, I mean) to make the victory genuinely painful to us. We could win easily, we could prop up a puppet government, put a few villains on trial, and use it for photo ops. When you think in terms of the visuals, the photo ops, the capacity for history to be used as propaganda, you are not likely to think of what will actually happen: it is not surprising that the planners of this fiasco did not foresee the obvious (years and years of low level mayhem, and the US trapped, unable to stop the violence, and unable to leave without turning loose a full throated bloodbath.) Disgraceful.

Killing Saddam Hussein does us no good. Probably can't do any more harm than we've already done, but that's the best I can say about it.