Just Try Harder

I never thought I would say this, but I'm starting to feel sorry for George Bush.

Truthfully, the guy irritates me and always has. His rather silly, empty face. His undeserved privilege. I knew a lot of rich kids at uni, guys who rarely did any work but whose families always pulled them through. It's annoying. It really pissed me off when he started a reckless invasion, posed on an aircraft carrier and then cut entitlements for veterans. Plus, my Big Dude's PTSD got much worse when the Iraq war started and he really hasn't recovered since. Thanks for that, George.

But now, of course, I am feeling a bit sorry for him and all the haggling over his latest plan for Iraq.

My Big Dude can hardly restrain his bitter laughter about all the talk of simultaneously sending over more troops while relying more on Iraqi forces. American boys (and girls) shouldn't be doing what Iraqi boys ought to be doing? Somehow, he seems to have heard that song before.

But there is something that is stopping me from open and even bitter mockery. Something he is trying to do that secretly appeals to me. And not just because it really was a noble ideal to try to bring democracy to the Middle East, however many other motivations existed. Really believe in what you're doing? Staked everything you have on it? Still struggling and failing? Then try harder. Do more. You just haven't done enough.

Never mind how ill-conceived the whole thing was from the beginning. Never mind that trying harder is just throwing good money (and good lives, good money, good intentions, the welfare of your own nation) after bad.

There is something sort of dumb and well-meaning and hopeless about the whole thing. Something I recognise in myself. Something that is stopping me from gloating about his difficulties, no matter how much I would like to see him out of power and some sanity restored.

Poor guy. Sometimes I think I know how he must be feeling.

Was Iraq ever really a nation? A nation is, the theory goes, a kind of "imagined community". Most of us will never know most of the other people in our nation, but we perceive ourselves to be part of the group, based on commonalities like language and (often untrue) stories we tell about ourselves, our history and our culture. Can the people of Iraq, made out of communities forced together by the western powers and then by a tyranical megalomaniac, ever imagine themselves as one group? Do they really even want to?

Iraq is reminding me more and more of the former Yugoslavia: a federation held together by a military strongman, whose apparent unity obscures the reality that it only exists because one group is able to dominate the others. Take away that strongman, undermine that domination, however flawed, and what happens? Fragmentation. Neighbours slaughtering neighbours. Hating each other more because of that forced intimacy. No daydream of an imagined community. Just a nightmare.

It's also reminding me of that old joke about pessimists and optimists. The pessimist thinks that things are so bad, they can't get any worse. The optimist believes they can.