No Catharsis, No End to the War: Why the "Villains" Must Pay

[gulliver]

We won't be able to get out of the Iraq War without a good writer. The story is already heading the wrong direction. It reminds me of Battlestar Galactica. If, at a minimum, we don't get the audience to realize what has been lost, and if we don't get them to blame the villains, the story line (aka the truth) will crash, and the future world will be a world of hurt. The epic tragedy we are in will drift into a soap opera muddle only to resurface under a different name as Iraq did with Vietnam.

What the Iraq War needs is an ending, and it needs to be a really good, really final one. Pulling out the troops should be the anti-climax. The climax should be the undoing of the villain, the lesson learned, the payload of the cautionary tale, the cleansing. If that doesn't happen, the story will be unresolved, and the audience will not have learned war is something to be avoided. Moreover, many will have learned quite the opposite. The conflict of the epic, robbed of resolution, will play out in our daily lives at our dinner tables.

I see Bush, Cheney, Rove, and the Republican Party as villains -- antagonists. You may see that too. But the audience as a whole does not get it. Bush and his Republicans have the presidency, which is conventionally a protagonist role. That allows Bush and his Republicans to steer the story. They know they can't achieve the catharsis they want, "a heroic, dad-besting Dubya Bush solves the Middle East with a bold blow in Iraq, restoring our country to greatness and confirming, once-and-for-all, that Vietnam need not have been lost." The only thing the Republicans can do is make the Dems appear to be the antagonists in the disaster.

IMO, the Dems' main job in ending the Iraq war is not pulling out the troops -- something that can be done by a stage hand. The Dems' main job is to create the story that ends the Iraq War. That means that Bush and his Republicans must be revealed in their true roles as antagonists. And we need our own heros to replace the antagonists in the story if possible. The ending of the Iraq War should plumb the depths of resolved rage against Bush and his Republicans while ending on a note of hope with the triumph of the long-suffering-if-nebbish Dems and character evolution in the "good Republicans" who did not perceive their roles in aiding the villains -- but have learned.

The good news from my perspective is that the objective, grass roots truth of the Iraq War -- indeed the entire truth of the Bush Presidency -- supports a dramatic rendition of Bush and his Republicans as antagonists. They make good villains because they are villains.

The bad news is that they have the presidency and better writing (pulpy and preposterous as it is).

[WinkyDink]

1. Iraq Illegal Invasion and Occupation.