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Please don't write in with a correction. I know just as well as you do that we're approaching the fifth, not the sixth, anniversary of the moment when, on March 19, 2003, George W. Bush told the American people:
"My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger… My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail."
At that moment, of course, the cruise missiles meant to "decapitate" Saddam Hussein's regime, but that killed only Iraqi civilians, were on their way to Baghdad. I'm perfectly aware that articles galore will be looking back on the five years since that day. This is not one of them.
Think of this piece as in the spirit of Senator John McCain's recent request that Americans not obsess about the origins of the Iraq War, but look forward. "On the issue of my differences with Senator Obama on Iraq," he typically said, "I want to make it very clear: This is not about decisions that were made in the past. This is about decisions that a president will have to make about the future in Iraq. And a decision to unilaterally withdraw from Iraq will lead to chaos."
The future, not the past, is the mantra, which is why I'm skipping next week's fifth anniversary of the Iraq War entirely. Now, let me ask you a future-oriented question:
What's wrong with these sentences?
On March 19, 2009, the date of the sixth anniversary of President Bush's invasion of Iraq, as surely as the sun rises in the East I'll be sitting here and we will still have many tens of thousands of troops, a string of major bases, and massive air power in that country. In the intervening year, more Americans will have been wounded or killed; many more Iraqis will have been wounded or killed; more chaos and conflict will have ensued; many more bombs will have been dropped and missiles launched; many more suicide bombs will have gone off. Iraq will still be a hell on Earth.
Prediction is, of course, a risky business. Otherwise I'd now be commuting via jet pack through spire cities (as the futuristic articles of my youth so regularly predicted). If you were to punch holes in the above sentences, you would certainly have to note that it's risky for a man of 63 years, or of any age, to suggest that he'll be sitting anywhere in a year; riskier yet if you happen to live in those lands extending from North Africa to Central Asia that Bush administration officials used to call the "arc of instability" -- essentially the oil heartlands of the planet -- before they turned them into one. It's always possible that I won't be sitting here (or anywhere else, for that matter) on March 19, 2009. Unfortunately, when it comes to the American position in Iraq, short of an act of God, the sixth anniversary of George Bush's war of choice is going to dawn much like the fifth one.
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