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Half empty Always Looking for the Dark SideBy Rick Horowitz
News & Views: The Cynic's Edition: Take that, you doubters! You thought we'd go into Iraq and make a mess of everything. Hah! We've barely been in Baghdad for two weeks, and already we've accomplished something nobody even dreamed we could accomplish: We've unified the Shiites and the Sunnis. They both hate our guts. And speaking of unity, wasn't it heartwarming to see that banner at the Sunni rally in Baghdad the other day? "No Sunni. No Shiite. Only One Islamic Nation." Apparently the Sunnis came to this noble conclusion approximately 14 seconds after Saddam Hussein disappeared. Nothing like losing the protector of your own elite-minority status, not to mention the long-time persecutor of the majority Shiites, to make you see that you're all really brothers under the skin. No hard feelings, right? I was thinking of declaring myself the mayor of Baghdad, but somebody else did it first. Maybe I can just declare myself another mayor of Baghdad, and we'll see who blinks. (I wouldn't count me out -- I've refused to leave a few well-decorated rooms in my time, too.) Iraq right now is a little bit gold rush, a little bit job fair -- except for the fair part. Is the Deck of 55 one of modern psychological warfare's great advances? You bet it is. It manages simultaneously to publicize and trivialize Iraq's most-wanted creeps, and gives the rest of us couch spuds a rooting interest in the outcome. And even the major media have bought in; every time there's another biggie captured, the newspapers and TV stations go, without a whiff of irony, right for the playing-card version of the guy's face. I assume the first unit to draw to an inside straight grabs the big prize money. (Also worth looking into: Does Rummy play rummy?) Personally, I can't wait for our fight with North Korea. What'll it be -- Kim Jong Il bobbleheads? Until this week, I never realized that the U.S. Defense Department actually has the legal authority to mount a preemptive attack on the U.S. State Department. The Pentagon can deny responsibility all it wants, but who else has the technical expertise to target Colin Powell with a precision-guided Gingrich? Case closed. Too bad about those antiquities, huh? All this bellyaching, though, about how important they were -- the history of Western civilization and all that. Hey, if they wanted us to protect that museum, they should have had an oil well in the lobby. I keep hearing reports and seeing videotapes, but I'm still not convinced the Democrats survived the bombing campaign in Iraq. We might not have irrefutable evidence that they were flattened beyond all recognition, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit. I think they've been using a party double. Speaking of parties, it's comforting to know that the president's political strategists aren't planning to exploit national tragedies for electoral advantage. The 2004 Republican convention will take place in New York City, which we already knew, and now it's reportedly been scheduled to run from August 30 to September 2. That's late, even for an incumbent president, and it's just days before the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I'm sure they were just trying to work around people's vacations. And finally... Before we rip our rotator cuffs patting ourselves on the back for Iraq, a reminder: It ain't over yet. After the military part, there's still the reconstructing part, not to mention the reinventing part. That's likely to be backbreaking, spirit-snuffing work, and even if we get it done? It still ain't over. We "won" back in '91, too, you'll recall, but putting American troops on Saudi soil also gave us one enraged Saudi named Osama bin Laden. Hard to know who or what will come seeping out of this one somewhere down the line. But. But whenever and wherever and however it comes, here's my prediction for the second word of reaction here at home. The first word, of course, will be "Omigod." And the second word, from every last dot on the political spectrum: "See?" Posted 4/22/03. Your
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Rick Horowitz
