Victory Soap v. 2.0

I haven't said much about the war and the current effort of the Enemy Party (aka the Democrat Party) to derail it because party politics is more important than the fate of Western Civilization, etc., because I've been too disgusted for words. Kim Du Toit can still come up with a phrase or two. But it's this sentence in one of the articles he linked to that stand out for me:

The Iraqis’ greatest fear (contrary to what those in the U.S. who are opposed to the war-effort seem to want everyone to believe) is that the Americans will abandon them.

(Emphasis mine.) And the realization came to me that this is just the way we do things in America these days. Haven't you heard (or had) this conversation before? The child begging his parents not to get a divorce, only to be told that it's "for the best" -- the best for them, that is. The woman begging her midlife-crisis-affected husband not to leave her, only to be told that he was bored with their marriage and felt he deserved some excitement after working all his life. The relationships thrown in the trashcan because the intense, initial rush of romantic feeling had faded away as all intense, initial feelings do.

I used the divorce analogy for a reason. Did we think that the way we governed our personal lives wouldn't spill over into the way we relate to the rest of the world? Not at first -- I am old enough to remember when the idea was that all this "liberation" would in some vague way spread out across the world to free every man, woman, and child from whatever oppressed them -- if you were dissatisfied with your marriage, getting a divorce was supposed to somehow, in a kind of butterfly-wing effect, loosen the grip of a dictator in Tanzania; where on the other hand, trying to work through a bad marriage in order to give your children at least a stable home life was the same as promoting fascism.

But toying with the institutions that hold a society together is the pastime of the rich and decadent. People who are a bit less insulated from the chaos of the universe are not as inclined to play games with their own lives. This is the stumbling block that our "progressive" elite keeps encountering, and trying with increasing ineffectiveness to ignore: the idea that other cultures take seriously the things we have discarded as "outmoded" and "backwards." Not just things like family and marriage, but things like honor and the value of keeping ones' word. We gave the Iraqis our word that we wouldn't leave them in the lurch when we got bored of war and wanted to go back to our toys, but some of us had our fingers crossed behind our backs. Unfortunately those people seem to be the ones in charge these days.

So I've mostly given up attempting to encourage support for the war. At this point everyone who can possibly be convinced has made up their mind one way or the other. When those of us who survive the next attack (and there will be a next one, and another, and another), we can comfort ourselves playing the "I told you so" game. We like games.

Update: I thought I'd add -- when we ran away from Vietnam like a toddler who'd burnt his fingers on the stove, we thought we had taken a pretty bad psychic hit. But the contempt mostly was self-inflicted -- if the Vietnamese ever thought we were lowly worms for cutting and running and leaving them holding the bag, few of them have said so. But this time we'll be giving the ex-girlfriend treatment to Arabs, who react rather differently to being treated like shit. The difference could well be akin to that of the ex-girlfriend who you always felt guilty about betraying because she was just such a nice, self-effacing person, and the psycho-ex-girlfriend who comes to your house and boils your pet rabbit. Oh, and you'll also have people like me, who are sick and tired of having their lives disrupted because of your lousy relationship skills. Get ready for some fun!