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Tuesday, 28 November 2006 14:17 |
 | | Mark West |
One of the nice things about keeping a journal is that you can see how well your predictions stand the test of time.
Some of my predictions, Iëm ashamed to admit, havenët done so well. "Yanks in 2006, no question about it," is one that didnët fare very well. My prediction of 27 seats for the Democrats wasnët that hot ÇƒÓ but itës one on which Iëm happy to have been wrong.
But hereës one from a battered Moleskine notebook, labeled "June 2002," that kind of set me back.
"Bush ÇƒÓ city on the hill imagery, Shane and lone cowboy standing against rabble; Chamberlain and appeasement imagery. Will invade Iraq."
It
wasnët until March 2003 that the invasion of Iraq began, but Iëm not
sure this prediction means Iëm some kind of Jeane Dixon. The signs were
there, loud and clear, in the images the president continually cited;
Saddam was Hitler, and those who would talk with him were appeasers,
like Neville Chamberlain. The prior efforts in Iraq were failures
because the menace of Saddam had not been eliminated, and Bush meant to
do that, whether the American public supported him or not.
And the signs
are still there, still as evident as a cloud the size of a manës hand.
Bush, in his recent visit to Vietnam, said the following:
"Weëll succeed unless we quit."
So thereës the lesson he draws from our long national nightmare in Vietnam. What of those who might draw other conclusions?
"We tend to want
there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going
to take a while... itës just going to take a long period of time for
the ideology that is hopeful, and that is an ideology of freedom, to
overcome an ideology of hate."
If you are
opposed to the ongoing war, then, you are someone who wants "instant
success," who wonët wait for the "ideology of hope" to triumph over
hate. And the lesson of Vietnam was that we quit too soon to win.
Silly me. I had
thought that the lesson of Vietnam was that nation-building didnët
work, that an army of guerillas was very difficult to defeat, that even
the most powerful nation on earth couldnët superimpose its will in a
place where sectarian or nationalistic impulses ruled the day.
Now, Seymour
Hersh, one of the most lauded journalists of our generation, writes in
an upcoming issue of The New Yorker that the neoconservatives in the
White House think that the road to peace in Iraq lies through Tehran.
Plans are, according to Hersh, still being made for attacks on Iran,
and the White House is determined to continue such planning regardless
of the will of the public or of Congress.
In 2002, I
predicted what the president would do by looking at the imagery he was
using in his public pronouncements about Iraq. Heës using those same
images today, but about Iran. And thereës evidence that the same sort
of planning that took place before the Iraq invasion is now taking
place concerning Iran.
I donët think you have to be Jeane Dixon to see what may be coming up next.
ï
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at UNC Asheville.
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