Couldn't get a damn lick of work done, today. I tried watching the hearing but, despite the fact that I typically have a high tolerance for The Potomac Twostep, I literally couldn't watch it. I tried.
Four years... four fucking years... and the best they could come up with was cherry-picked data and feel-good platitudes about how they almost kinda sorta have it all figured out now, maybe.
I expected Petraeus to sell the party line. After all, asking him to give an honest assessment of the occupation is like asking a parent to publicly criticize their kids. I'm sure even Jeffrey Dahlmer's mom and dad had their "but if you really knew him" moments and it was silly to expect that Petraeus would treat his baby any differently. What I didn't expect from him was the utterly dishonest, two-faced bullshit that I saw this morning.
And, as with all lies and liars, the stories didn't add up. Consider:
Desperate to show "progress", he pointed over and over to how the al Anbar sheiks had turned against AQI (al Queda In Iraq) and how this or that US operation had AQI "on the run" and barely able to act. Yet, desperate to justify US troops staying indefinitely, he pointed again and again to how scary and powerful AQI is and how they would take over the country if we left.
Which is it, General? Is AQI weak, unpopular and on the run, or are they pervasive, strong, and poised to take over? Evidently, the answer is both, depending on which response justifies his position. This is not the behavior of an honest or honorable man.
Yet the suffering continues, and will continue. Not because there's some noble goal at the end but because of stubborn, deadly pride. They have so conflated their own egos with America's interests that the obvious-- that they were and are wrong-- is now unthinkable.
Behind it all is an utter lack of humanity. People-- formerly living humans with hopes and dreams and families and worries about the future-- are collapsed into colorful bar graphs. See? The colorful bar that stands in for their corpses is a little shorter than the one that represents those who were killed last month! That's "progress!"
What? Your son was shot in the head? Well, which side of the head? Its terribly important, you know, because if it was on the front side then it doesn't count. He gets left out of the colorful bar chart representing "sectarian violence" because that shows even more "progress".
Its utterly inhuman, insane, disgusting, and absurd in the worst possible way. Its the Ultimate Bad Craziness, yet everyone plays along because its so much more comforting to squint at a bar chart, or argue over data collection methodology than to contemplate the faces of the dead, and how they got that way.
I wish I could hide away, too. I find it hard to understand, let alone articulate, the suffering I feel in reaction to the madness of a war so far from home. Most days I would love nothing more than to put it all aside and focus on my job, or my gadgets. Some days I even try, but I just can't pull it off. I just can't.