" Historians will never agree on the true cause of this war; I doubt
if it was ever wholly clear inside George Bush's head . As for its
effect, the Law of Unintended Consequences may work either
way: his intent might have been malign but the result could be to
humanity's benefit, or vice versa. We shall see. On this one, I'm
with Chou En-lai, Mao's inscrutable old sidekick, who when
asked, circa 1972, what the effects of the French revolution had
been, reputedly replied: "It's too soon to tell."
At last count the number of dead Americans in the war was 108,
almost exactly the number who die every day in road accidents,
and pretty close, I suspect, to the number the Pentagon
privately predicted. The chances of knowing any one of these
are remote, and the reporting of their funerals has been
overshadowed by the wondrous stuff about returning prisoners,
including - oh, heaven - a pretty female.
I happened to catch an
hour of al-Jazeera the other week. My limited Arabic means I
have no idea whether the commentary was more or less biased
than that on US TV. But the images were startlingly different,
different even from those on the BBC, because they included a
great many mangled dead bodies. Since they were Iraqi, they
were not newsworthy here.
I have noted before how obsessed Americans now are with the
second world war. In the New York Times a few months back
the writer Anthony Giardina attributed this largely to the late
Stephen Ambrose, whose annual books exulting wartime male
bonding have given rise to other successful imitations both in
print and, of course, on the screen. The appeal of the civil war
has never faded.
War for many Americans has become something fascinating,
glorious, satisfying, charmingly distant - as remote in its way as
Gettysburg - and thus quasi-fictional. The sanitised
entertainment provided for the last month has only enhanced its
appeal. And by the time the reality of being liberated by Bush
might become more apparent, as in Afghanistan, everyone will
have lost interest. On to Syria then, and let's win there. Coming,
Tone?"
matthew.engel@guardian.co.uk
Article: The thrill of battle
Author: Matthew Engel
Date: Tuesday April 15, 2003
Source: The Guardian
guardian.co.uk |
