Sometimes it seems that we inhabit parallel worlds, in one and the same time and place. There is the “real” world, in which actual things happen, and a virtual world, in which we all pretend to believe in various fantasies.
The real world intrudes big time into the front page of the New York Times today, and it’s instructive to compare the verities of the virtual world to the inconvenient realities from the real world.
The fifth anniversary of the biggest fantasy of them all, the Iraq War, is now approaching. WMDs and the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection have long been exposed as myths. But there were others, and some have engendered a sort of ironic present day, on the ground reality. Remember when we were told that Iraqi Oil would fund the entire war effort, with plenty to spare? How did that work out?
The sea of oil under Iraq is supposed to rebuild the nation, then make it prosper. But at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq’s largest refinery here is diverted to the black market, according to American military officials. Tankers are hijacked, drivers are bribed, papers are forged and meters are manipulated — and some of the earnings go to insurgents who are still killing more than 100 Iraqis a week.
“It’s the money pit of the insurgency,” said Capt. Joe Da Silva, who commands several platoons stationed at the refinery.
So, the fantasies have proven to be partly true. The oil is funding a war effort, just not ours. The secondary fantasy, that the war would be cheap in any event, has long been dispelled, with, of course, no repercussions to its proponents.
Meanwhile, now that even the Pentagon has acknowledged what realists always knew, that Saddam had no connection to Al-Qaeda, we have chosen to indulge in the fantasy that, whatever the reality was when we attacked, we are now fighting Al-Qaeda in Iraq. But the Times says: “No, not really”
Some American officials and politicians maintain that Sunni insurgents have deep ties with Qaeda networks loyal to Osama bin Laden in other countries. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, whose members are mainly Iraqi but whose leadership has been described by American commanders as largely foreign, remains a well-financed and virulent force that carries out large-scale attacks.
But there are officers in the American military who openly question how much a role jihadism plays in the minds of most people who carry out attacks. As the American occupation has worn on and unemployment has remained high, these officers say the overwhelming motivation of insurgents is the need to earn a paycheck.
Nor do American officers say they believe that insurgent attacks are centrally coordinated. “As far as networked coordination of attacks, we are not seeing that,” said a military official familiar with studies on the insurgency.
Opposition to the occupation and fear of the Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated government and security forces “clearly are important factors in the insurgency,” the official said. “But they are being rivaled by the economic factor, the deprivation that exists.”
Maj. Kelly Kendrick, operations officer for the First Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division in Salahuddin, estimates that there are no more than 50 hard-core “Al Qaeda” fighters in Salahuddin, a province of 1.3 million people that includes Baiji and the Sunni cities of Samarra and Tikrit.
He said most fighters were seduced not by dreams of a life following Mr. bin Laden, but by a simpler pitch: “Here’s $100; go plant this I.E.D.”
“Ninety percent of the guys out here who do attacks are just people who want to feed their families,” Major Kendrick said.
The First Brigade’s commander, Col. Scott McBride, concurs. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard one person say, ‘I believe in a caliphate,’ ” he said.
Meanwhile, the Sainted General Petraeus has all but admitted that his vaunted surge was a modest military success (probably a transient success, at that) but a total failure in achieving the fantasy objective of uniting historically warring factions.
But all this is occurring in the real world, and it will not be allowed to intrude on the virtual world in which John McCain will be allowed to campaign. In John McCain’s world, the “surge” is a success, we are fighting Al-Qaeda, and victory can be achieved so long as we…, well, here even his fantasy view becomes a bit murky. Apparently it involves staying in Iraq forever.
But never mind, no one will confront McCain with the uncomfortable realities of the war he helped create and sustain. When it comes to our public discourse, we play by the rules of the virtual world, and though we recognize the existence of that other, real world, we refuse to let it intrude into the virtual world in which we conduct our discourse. In the virtual world, people like George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, William Kristol, Frederick Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, et. al. are considered experts to whom we should defer, despite the fact that they are always proven wrong by developments in the real world. They are treated with respect, while those who insisted and still insist that the real world is…well, “real” are still ignored or marginalized.
