The Corpuscle

Ron Hutcheson of Knight Ridder says:

Two years after the Iraq invasion, America seems to be losing its stomach for war.

Actually, I think what America is losing is its lunch.

This is the standard explanation we get from the powerful: the American public is a big pansy-ass blowhard that thinks war is great as long as it doesn't go on any longer than a summer replacement sit-com series.

Naturally this would be the explanation we get from the powerful. It puts the blame precisely where it belongs. In their view.

In fact, for better or for worse, it isn't that America loses its stomach for war. What it loses its stomach for is incompetence.

Incompetence has always been the issue, as far as I'm concerned, with the Bush Administration. It was their incompetence that kept them from paying attention to the signs that 9/11 was coming. It was their incompetence that made them think they could win a war in Iraq and build a new nation there by overthrowing one sick bastard.

Incompetence is the product of living in a world nobody else lives in. You've got a problem, you come up with a solution that makes perfect sense to you but leaves everybody else scratching their heads and saying "Wha?" Your solution works great in the world inside your head. Unfortunately, the real world isn't inside there with you.

That's incompetence.

Listen, powerful people, for better or for worse America doesn't ever lose its stomach for war; what it loses is its lunch over incompetence. We all live down here in the real world where solutions to real world problems either work or they don't. If they don't work, if they clearly aren't working no matter how much B.S. you throw at us and at the problem, then the answer isn't that we are impatient. The answer is: you suck and we want out.

And by the way... these poll numbers? The Bush Administration sinking like a stone? This is not just a fleeting dip in the daily grind of politics. What you are seeing is what I've been predicting since 9/11. Bush is going to go down as one of the worst presidents this country has ever had. These aren't just poll numbers; these are the beginnings of history's judgment on Bush. These are the first tentative scribblings of what will become some of the most disturbing, appalling even, volumes that will ever be written in the lengthening story of America.

History will revile this man, which is cold comfort of course for all those whose lives he has damaged, and for all those who will suffer in the future because of this administration's current policies. But then, to the powerful, our daily lives have never particularly mattered much. Often, the best we can ever hope for is that the truth will eventually be told about these people.

Well. The truth-telling has begun. Drink deep from it while you can.