The Banality of Delusion

"Manpower, junior size... The Jefferson High School drum and bugle corps in Roanoke, Virginia started the junior commando rally with a fanfare and a drum roll... school children awaited the opening of the rally that was to number them as part of America's junior army to collect scrap for our armed forces."
Photographer: Howard Liberman
Library of Congress
NPR story this morning:

"Exiting Iraq, U.S. Brigade Traces Invasion Route."

From comments by soldiers at a stop on the way to Kuwait:

"...our job is done here (I just can't wait to get home...)"

"... we started really well; I don't know if there's more we could've done..."

"... we came here to liberate: freedom for a country. Things are gonna happen...but our main objective we came here to do has been accomplished..."

From a pep talk by their captain:

This is our nation's life work, right here...there are guys who have honorably retired from the army and have not seen this thing resolved. But you'll see it tonight: we're about to put "The End" on a big chapter in the book of military history.

Correspondent Mike Shuster does acknowledge, "That may be true for most of the American troops who have served in Iraq, but not for the 50,000 who will remain for another 15 months, nor for the Iraqis themselves."

Which is followed by audio from Tuesday's Baghdad suicide bombing that killed 61 police recruits.

The battalion's commander "says the US has done everything possible to stabilize Iraq." In his own words,

We've given them enough time to get it right themeslves, to secure the election, secure the population, defeat anti-government forces. It's time to go home and, you know, wish them the best of luck with the future. But at the same time, it demonstrates our commitment to the people of this country; we'll be strategic allies, our friendships are eternal...

Why do all the quotes have the same tone of corporate happy talk made in the wake of a horrendous executive decision?

Sure, the grunts have to tell themselves this stuff.

And they've had so many years of practice: with policies like the hijacking of the National Guard into the Bush wars along with stop loss; add the lack of job opportunities at home, and enlistees as a group have spent year after year in something they want to believe has had a purpose.

But the smugness of that commander's "best of luck" to our "eternal" friends is in no way real "history" or defensible sentiment. It's not even the least bit convincing as a form of "declare victory and get the hell out."

We certainly won't be "out." And the suffering we've unleashed won't end.

Our victory is, of course, conventional wisdom among our self-regarding deemers of what is to be the conventional wisdom.

Yet there are still a few non-believers. Robert Parry, for one, persists in trying to inject some pesky reality.