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That an undertaking as momentous and as costly as America’s war in Iraq could vanish so quickly from the forefront of the national consciousness does not speak well of the United States in the early twenty-first century: not for its seriousness and not for its sense of responsibility. The American people, we are told, appear to be exhausted by the war in Iraq. But exhausted by what, exactly? Certainly not from fighting it. The fighting is done by kids from the towns between the coasts, not by any of the big shots who really matter. And they are not exhausted by paying for it, either: another generation will do that. No, when Americans say that they are tired of the war in Iraq, what they really mean is that they are tired of watching it on television, or of reading about it on the Internet. As entertainment, as Topic A, the agony has become a bore. “A car bomb exploded today in a crowded Baghdad marketplace, killing 53 and wounding 112.” Click.
The irony of America’s big tune-out lies in its timing. It has taken place during what has been the most dramatic phase of the six-year-long conflict–more precisely, during the reversal of the war’s fortunes. It is this reversal, this unexpected turnaround to the possibility of something less than a disastrous outcome, that has allowed so many Americans guiltlessly to forget about it.
Hope but downsize. The Washington Post reported last fall that in September 2007 the U.S. military embedded journalists 219 times, last September 39 times; in the early years of the Iraq war a dozen newspapers and newspaper chains kept full-time bureaus in Baghdad, as of last October four.
