“The father, now no more a father, cries,

Ho Icarus! where are you? as he flies;

Where shall I seek my boy? he cries again,

And saw his feathers scatter’d on the main.

Then curs’d his art; and fun’ral rites confer’d,

Naming the country from the youth interr’d.”

— Ovid, Metamorphoses

“The Iraq War is like the sun; no one wants to stare at it for too long.”—Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

When walking through the parking lots of shopping malls and grocery stores these days, I’ve noticed a conspicuous absence of those yellow “Support the Troops” ribbon magnets that were all the rage in the opening phases of the Iraq War.

Iraq has become unseemly these days, with continued evidence of mishandled intelligence in the days prior to the invasion coming to light and the recent descent of the nation in question into a chaos of bloody and downright unfashionable sectarian violence. In response, it seems, Americans have done the only right and proper thing available to people who wish to avoid appearing in bad taste or offending anyone’s sensibilities: they simply took the magnets off. What a relief we decided not to go with bumper stickers. Think of the paint damage!

To a certain extent, one of the only definitive things you can say about the Iraq War at this stage is that few in the general American public really know, with any certainty, what the whole awful mess is about. I can only speak to my own beliefs.

On a historical level, I believe Operation Iraqi Freedom will be seen as a tragedy, the last gasping act of an empire that’s passed its prime. Among other factors, the White House believed that America needed to appear to the world—most importantly, to would-be superpowers like China—as the military dynamo it had seen itself as since World War II.

America has had a lot going for it: a geographically defensible location, astonishing manufacturing productivity, the influence of the best and brightest of every country in the world who wanted to live in a free land—and, far more often than is publicly mentioned, dumb luck.

But, as 9/11 proved, geography doesn’t mean dick anymore. The economic practices of the last 50 years sent manufacturing overseas. We became a service-sector economy—the only thing America makes well these days are websites and guns, and websites can only take you so far.

While the U.S. declined, Asia rose. Japan became a new cultural center. China and India, breeding like the Rapture was coming, began asserting themselves in the world community out of sheer evolutionary necessity. Hell, Kuala Lumpur even beat us at the skyscraper.

China was in a perpetual New Deal, each public works project bigger than the next, providing an income base for a growing middle class and the infrastructure for a rapidly industrializing nation. And they still had two important pieces that have yet to be moved: the largest standing army in the world and a modern nuclear arsenal. China’s arsenal is not as large as America’s, but really, how many warheads do you need?

In the 1990s, then-Undersecretary for Defense Policy Paul Wolfowitz and then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, wrote a defense planning guide, which advocated an aggressive American foreign policy, which would ensure that the U.S. remained the sole superpower and would “[convince] potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue an aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.” The language was vague, but many of the ideas contained in the draft, including the concept of “preemptive” warfare, would be revisited and adopted by the administration of President George W. Bush, under the moniker of the “Wolfowitz Doctrine.”

The U.S. wanted (and planned for) a quick victory in Iraq because it needed a quick victory. We needed to prove that we could still put one in the “W” column with the superior technology and indomitable spirit of the Greatest Country in the World.

It’s like a group of boys on the first day of gym class. Everyone’s sizing each other up, but there’s a clear, instinctive pecking order. The most insecure boy will go after the weakest—with either an easy insult or a well-placed elbow—as a way to buy time, to protect himself from the real alphas.

That’s what “Shock and Awe” was all about. Forget any short-term goals in Iraq itself. Why would you need flashy explosions and high-tech weaponry to scare a nation that is still repairing the damage from the last time American Cruise missiles ripped into Baghdad? This TV-friendly assault could only have been meant as a message to China or North Korea or whoever the Administration thought was getting a bit too big for their britches.

Our leaders know well the principle, developed by military philosopher Karl Von Clausewitz, that war is and extension of politics by other means. Unfortunately for the American effort, domestic politics quickly became too large a concern at the war’s inception.

From the earliest days of the assault, the Administration made it clear that the civilian leadership at the Pentagon—not the military leadership on the ground—would have the final say on tactics. Army officers frequently requested a larger force than the one originally committed to the effort, but were turned down by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputies.

This, in part, stems from Rumsfeld’s belief in a small, agile ground force as opposed to the traditional large deployments used in the first Gulf War and NATO actions in Bosnia, which he considered bulky and inefficient. The most public disagreement between Army commanders and the Administration over troop levels came before the war even began. In February 2003, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki told Congress that to effectively fight the war, the U.S. would need hundreds of thousands of troops, according to an essay by Larry Diamond in the journal Foreign Affairs. The Administration reacted by announcing that he would be replaced within a year.

As a result of this environment, Diamond writes, “Officers and soldiers in Iraq were forced to keep their complaints about insufficient manpower and equipment private.”

“Instead of preparing for the worst,” he continues, “Pentagon planners assumed that Iraqis would joyously welcome U.S. and international troops as liberators.” Nothing could be farther from the truth, soldiers would find out, as they watched angry mobs loot the nation’s infrastructure, the first inklings of a widespread enmity that would become the insurgency.

Underestimating the will and ingenuity of the Iraqi military may be the most costly mistake the Pentagon made in its invasion plans. One of the greatest concerns raised in the pre-war debate was the “Fortress Baghdad” scenario, in which large numbers of Iraqi troops held fortified positions in the capital city, forcing coalition troops into a bloody urban struggle (think Mogadishu, but with about 100 times as many troops involved). But lo and behold, when troops rolled into Baghdad, they found it nearly abandoned, and the Administration declared “Mission Accomplished” within weeks.

In fact, according to Seymour Hersh’s book, Chain of Command, there is evidence that the guerrilla insurgency was planned all along. Hersh writes that Ahmad Sadik, a general in the Iraqi Air Force, told him that “Saddam had drawn up plans for a widespread insurgency in 2001, soon after George Bush’s election brought into office many of the officials who had directed the 1991 Gulf War. Huge amounts of small arms and other weapons were stockpiled around the country for use by insurgents.” In the early days of the invasion, Saddam’s most trusted troops were “ordered to return to their homes and initiate the resistance from there.”

And so each day American newspapers reported another handful of deaths or injuries; four here, seven there. Before long, the news reports became so identical that many Americans barely noticed them at all.

The geopolitical strategy advocated by the Cheneys and Wolfowitzes of the Bush Administration was not the sole guiding principle for the invasion of Iraq. It was a logical basis by which the other compelling interests—both political and financial—that are manifested in the Bush Administration could realize their own goals.

From the beginning of the conflict, left-leaning activist groups declared that the plan for Iraq was nothing more than a resource war—at best, a continuation of imperialist trends dating back to mercantilism and the triangle trade; at worst, a simple smash-and-grab pillage run for the gold of the modern era.

Another claim, not new to the American protest movement, was that the war was the continuation of a long line of undeclared wars that, intentionally or not, advanced the interests of the military-industrial complex, the web of military commanders, defense contractors, and weapons makers whose immediate needs are suited by armed conflict.

No one man embodies these ideas more than Vice President Dick Cheney. Between his ties to the Pentagon and those to his former company, Halliburton, Cheney has more to gain from a military conflict in an oil-rich country than any man alive. The defense that his supporters usually use is that the revenue generated by Cheney’s 433,000 share-equivalent Halliburton stock options is donated to charity.

Well, yes…while he’s in office and under public scrutiny. Meanwhile, according to halliburtonwatch.com, Halliburton’s stock value has gone from $20 in March 2003 to $66 in September 2005. Furthermore, Halliburton has been awarded tens of billions of dollars in Iraqi reconstruction contracts, most of which were not open to competitive bidding. Add to Cheney the whole host of contractors, weapons-makers, oil companies, and other American firms that stood to gain from war with Iraq and it creates one powerful political force that would be difficult for any politician to ignore.

Cheney also knew something else that the American public was not necessarily privy to at the time. At the very least, he’d heard the rumors: Saudi Arabia, currently the third-largest supplier of foreign oil to the U.S. and a much-lauded ally in the War on Terror, was in a precarious position.

First, there was evidence that the vast oil reserves the Saudis claimed to possess were exaggerated. Wells were pumping 50/50 oil and sea water, due to sea water injection methods used to increase the pressure of a given well.

Second, domestic political tension was always a concern with Saudi Arabia. The ruling family, the al-Saud dynasty, is made up of the king and thousands of princes. Each gets an annual oil allowance based on the size of their family and their status within the regime, ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to $100 million in some cases. The Saudi princes spent their wealth ostentatiously, building private jets and luxurious homes for themselves and going on extravagant vacations to America.

Also, the regime had the aforementioned business ties to America. Saudi Arabia had no military infrastructure of its own when it began modernizing in the years after World War II, so it bought vast supplies of state-of-the-art weaponry from America. In return, the U.S. got cheap oil. It was a cycle of mutual profit and investment that still exists today.

Average Saudis, practicing the radical brand of Salafist Islam that is preached and mandated in the kingdom, were put off by their leaders’ relationship with America, a nation many Salafists regard as the Great Satan. This tension has often turned violent, whether in the form of the 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by the Muslim Brotherhood or the recent failed attack on the Abqaiq oil facility.

All of this adds up to a difficult position for the American oil industry. It’s not hard to imagine their thinking: the Saudis can’t keep this game going forever, plus 15 hijackers just participated in the 9/11 attacks. We need a new horse. Now, if only we could find a Western-style democracy with almost as much oil…and one that owed us real debts from reconstruction efforts and poor financial management…not to mention the moral debt owed to the Great Liberator who freed them of an evil tyrant…

Enter Iraq: Saudi Arabia v2.0. Second largest known oil reserves in the world, racked by debt before the most recent invasion even took place, and steadily building an economic model based on the American system. Ka-ching.

But how did this happen? How did we allow the interests of industry tycoons and power-hungry megalomaniacs to become vital interests of the nation worth spending American blood and treasure to defend?

Well, in part because, as American society currently stands, those are our vital interests. The American economy depends for its vitality on our superpower status, the cheap labor of underdeveloped nations, and on the profits generated by U.S. military action. America needs cheap oil to maintain our vast system of supply lines, mass-agriculture, and consumer activity—namely suburban homes and cheap transportation. We’re a nation organized by, for, and around the economy of the suburban lifestyle and the service of that lifestyle.

Apart from our own complicity, the organs of resistance in the American political system have failed to act as even a moderate check on the power of the Bush Administration and the Republican majority. In the run-up to the invasion, Democrats were busy posturing and flexing their muscles to avoid any appearance of being “weak on defense.” Most Democratic lawmakers claim that they were just as swindled as the general public by the Bush Administration, but does this really make any sense? If there were private citizens investigating the Bush Administration from the day George took office, how can they defend their own inaction as Washington insiders? By playing dumb? Please.

Meanwhile, the American media did a beautiful job of parroting every batshit claim made by the Administration or its supporters with little or no investigation or perspective added to their reports. With the exception of journalists like Hersh of The New Yorker and documentary filmmakers like Jeremy Earp of Hijacking Catastrophe (and, yes, Michael Moore), the media did nothing more than confuse an already complex issue. Twenty-four-hour news stations recycled bit after 30-second bit showing sexy explosions and anti-aircraft fire from Iraq, setting aside five minutes per hour for “Behind the Headlines” commentary from rabid ideologues on both sides of the issue. Then it was right back into some asinine “youth culture” investigation written like a Wild Safari script about “this new file-sharing gadgetry the kids are using” or a national version of the local news “pedophiles and ghetto fires” approach to serious journalism.

Flash forward to the present. On February 22, a bomb destroyed the golden dome of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra, one of the holiest cities for Iraqi Shiites, sparking a rash of sectarian violence in the region that had killed nearly 400 people as of March 1. While top American military commanders have characterized the bombings as a temporary crisis, many commentators in the U.S. and around the world have predicted that the country is on the brink of full-blown civil war.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has announced that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just the “early battles” in a campaign against Islamic extremism that has no defined end, according to the Washington Post. In a speech filled with comparisons to the Cold War, Rumsfeld repackaged the War on Terror as “The Long War,” the Post continued, adding that the Pentagon plans “to make the military more agile and capable of dealing with unconventional threats”—Rumsfeld’s dream come true.

According to a February survey on pollingreport.com, 65 percent of Americans disapprove of the way President Bush has handled the war, as opposed to 50 percent at this time last year and 20 percent in May 2003.

Right now, the U.S. is the broken hero; we’re Dirk Diggler masturbating in the back of a pick-up truck to get money for more blow. The rest of the world heard the bells of 9/11 as the end of the American Century and we’re frantically groping for any loose scraps of national pride to prove they rang for someone else.

George Bush’s role in this war cannot be overstated, but my sincerest hope is that history remembers him for the sleight of hand he pulled in the days, weeks, and months following 9/11.

After the deal went down in New York, D.C., and Pennsylvania, the world opened its arms to America. Nations that previously despised our foreign policy and our way of life offered pledges of solidarity. Our allies promised the full strength of their nations to aid us in the global struggle to fight terrorism, or whatever the papers are calling it these days.

At home, we were a unified nation. The spectacle of a nation losing its innocence played out on national TV and we came together as a people in a way not seen since World War II. The patriotic sentiment broke race, gender, and even class boundaries as we watched, confused and frightened, and waited for our president to tell us how we could use this new unity, the silver lining on the cloud of burning debris that still hung over lower Manhattan.

The answer: Buy a boat. Oh, and we have a new enemy now. Defying all recent historical knowledge, common sense, and logic, it turns out Iraq is our biggest problem, not the radical extremist group that actually claimed responsibility for 9/11 or the nation that supports them with the money we spend on oil or the fact that we keep having to send American troops to die in and offend this region of the world because oil addiction is built into our way of life.

Yep, Iraq. Don’t it just beat all? No worries, just buy a magnet. We’ve got these great new blood-red ones with a nifty design in the center of the ribbon, sort of a national coat of arms. It starts with the traditional eagle with the shield in the middle of its chest, like on most of the current national seals, but this shield is divided into four sections. In the top-left corner is a portrait of P.T. Barnum. In the top-right is an iPod. Lower-left is a cartoon of Calvin pissing on a Toyota symbol, and in the lower-right we have a poetic depiction of a dead human being of unspecified non-white ethnicity. Slogans? Of course. Arching over the top is our tried and true “In God We Trust;” but on the bottom? “Ignorance is Bliss.” Gives it a new spin, right? Then top it all off with a nice, large dollar sign stamped dead in the center of the thing. Less than a buck at your local Wal-Mart—it’ll be replacing Old Glory before you know it.

And the greatest part? It’s still a magnet! You can take it off your car whenever you don’t feel like being associated with all the nasty implications and civic responsibilities that come with being an American. Going to pick your child up from soccer practice? Magnet on. A lecture on imperialism at the local university? Magnet off. It’s just that simple! All that tedious process of grappling with a firm, principled stance on your own beliefs evaporates when you’ve got your very own non-permanent, non-serious political speech accessory.

If nothing else, it would be perfect for the back of a Hummer.