Prescient artists, part 2

In his comic anti-war classic, Catch-22, Joseph Heller painted a soul-lacerating picture of a group of American flyboys trapped on a Mediterranean Island in the middle of World War II by the career ambitions of a dimwitted commanding officer. Colonel Cathcart, who kept an actual ledger of "feathers in his cap" and "black eyes" in his office, routinely raised the number of missions required before transfer to non-combat status, so the crews in his squadron watched hopelessly as the horizon of safety retreated forever before them, from 25 to 35 to 45 to 55, etc., ad infinitum. John Yossarian, the anti-hero of the anti-war novel, rationally concluded that Colonel Cathcart was as much an enemy to him as the German batteries trying to blast him out of the sky. Anyone trying to kill him, he said, was his enemy.

Cathcart was from a privileged background and had sawdust for brains. He overrated himself massively, but his stupidity was mitigated by the crafty behind-the-scenes manipulations of Colonel Korn, the bald, efficient, ruthless aide who used Cathcart to promote his own ambitions. Yossarian, up against this pair, resorts to increasingly dangerous and insubordinate strategems to break free of certain death in the sky. One can't be sure at the end whether he succeeds, but no one who reads this book can fail to appreciate the ways that lower echelon soldiers are used by higher-ups for self-aggrandizement, even when it means that men will die for the sake of vanity.

In today's news we see that the "lack of funding" (and a lack of replacement troops) for the Iraq war may "lead" to extension of the tours of duty for all 145,000 troops in theatre. Nothing much has changed since those harrowing days on the Isle of Pianosa in 1943. Soldiers are still being used by higher-ups for political ends, even when it means they will die. By this point, even Cathcart-Bush would have to conclude, after talking it through with Cheney-Korn, that the question of "winning" in Iraq has been answered. By analogy, Yossarian knew the Allies had defeated the Germans even as Cathcart kept asking him to risk his life by flying missions. In Iraq, the American soldiers know that no matter how long they stay, Iraq is not going to stabilize into a secure democracy with its three principal factions living in joyous harmony, able to "defend itself," holding regular "elections," sharing power and revenue and all the rest. They're in Iraq not because success is near but because they're not allowed to come home, and Bush will ratchet up the pressure on them, sacrifice their lives, so he does not have to back down before a hostile Congress. The soldiers in Iraq know they face two enemies, the murky cadres of insurgents who detonate bombs and fire RPG rounds at them while they patrol the streets, and George W. Bush, who will wear them out and get them killed so that his colossal failure can remain a "work in progress" instead of a fait accompli. I doubt that literary analogies will be much comfort to American grunts in Iraq. With or without funding, they will remain in Iraq so that Bush does not have to make yet another, final entry in the black-eye column of the ledger.