 Sleeping With the Enemy By Michael WILLARD |
I wasn't even one of those weekend National Guard warriors. I fought the Cola wars, between Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and thankfully, and to my knowledge, no one died other than of natural coronaries.
My oldest daughter, Kelly, now 34, was a war baby, meaning when she was on her way toward being delivered, Henrietta Briggs, my draft board supervisor, suggested I didn't need to show up for military duty.
It's a good thing. I would have made a lousy soldier. I once left a top-secret briefing book in a hotel room in Cairo. The book and the angry security fellow caught up with me in Ankara.
Touchy people those spooks. Who would have thought that such declarations as "Anwar Sadat has swarthy skin and is rather short" would have been super secret. But you never know.
I write this in prelude to my thoughts on the current war, apparently over after less than four complete weeks. Today the British Broadcast Company said a sixth rate power had been clobbered by a super power, sort of like my Florida Gators stomping the Elderberry School for Girls.
Previously - after two weeks - the distinguished BBC had griped because the war was "lasting longer than expected". This was two weeks into the bout. After the Iraqi meltdown, the BBC reporters began to bemoan the looting, which, from a PR standpoint, wasn't the best visuals.
Though a neophyte at this, I never thought the war with Saddam Hussein would end before the next commercial break. Shock and awe to me was more a term befitting Georgia Championship Wrestling. Applied to actual military mayhem, it had comic characteristics.
I had no particular insight into the war, other than thinking it would last longer. I mean, considering the Red Guard, what do you have to lose, as the song goes, when you have nothing left to lose. They apparent opted for prudence.
There was, I admit, that glimmer of hope that Saddam's troopers would be scared out of their under shorts by SHOCK and AWE, toss up their hands and begin singing that gospel favorite, "I Surrender All."
It nearly happened that way.
Certainly it ended much quicker and much more merciful than BBC Prime's "Eastenders" which sustains soapy intrigue even if you take time off the couch to have a quadruple-by-pass and also to visit Disney World for two weeks.
But the BBC was obnoxious in its coverage of the war.
Could it be they actually were cheering for Britain's (and thus the United State's) defeat? Didn't they realize we were dealing with a combination Dr. No, Goldfinger, Lex Luther, the Joker and Hannibal the Cannibal.
Saddam was (I really do think Elvis has left the building and past tense is appropriate) not a tin horn dictator like Idi Amin of Uganda a few years ago, whose ghastly terror was limited to his own country. He had invaded others, and yes he does have weapons of mass destruction.
If you sincerely doubt that, what was the purpose of hundreds of gas masks and safe suits found by Coalition troops in abandon Iraqi camps? Flatulent cows?
In striving toward impartiality, which I find upsetting when British soldiers are dying either from friend or foe, the BBC seems to be the mouthpiece for the Iraqi regime - amplified.
Blatant untruths are presented as maybes. That which was true and negative to the Coalition cause - and there is plenty of it - seems to be presented with gusto and smugness rather than with dispassionate observation.
To be fair, the leaders of the United States and Great Britain did create a credibility gap by boosting over-expectations, but did any sane person really believe those expectations. Obviously they did.
Only 12 days into the struggle, and Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who had been fairly gung-ho in joining the fight, was drearily bringing up the Vietnam alliteration about "light at the end of the tunnel."
This particular light, however, unlike the one of yesteryear, was neither that dim nor was it a train coming in the opposite direction.
Shock and Awe was more sound and light show. There was no mass surrender. For a short while, Mohammed was still more afraid of Saddam than in want of liberation. It was called quiet desperation.
Given the choice of the war lasting several months rather than weeks, the choice and the strategy to me seemed rather obvious.
I preferred the one with fewer people being maimed and killed - on either side. And that's what happened.
This, despite what one might have heard on BBC, which, after a while, had less credibility than the Iraqi Information Minister whose last famous words were "The bastards are being slaughtered at the gates of Baghdad."
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More in the section:
Gripes, Gripes and More Gripes
Working Man Blues
Ukraine's Founding Fathers
Read also previous issue' articles:
Expats: Why Are We Here?
The Luckiest Man Alive
Being Vladimir Putin
The Age of Unreason?
Yes, I Give a Damn
News:
The Rush to Judgment
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