The future of today's (reality-based) present in the (Republican fantasy) future

Recent posts by Wonky Muse and Tankwoman got me thinking about how antiwar opinion has formed in the United States over the Iraq War and earlier around the Vietnam War.

I find it pretty remarkable that there is such strong opposition to the war among the public. Some pundits seem to regard the fact that there aren't hundreds of thousands of people out demonstrating in the streets against the war means that there's no "antiwar movement".

But call it a movement, call it voters upset with the war, call it soccer moms and dads sick of the killing and lying, whatever. People have turned hard against this war. Lord knows it hasn't been because our TV networks and major newspapers have been aggressively dissecting the phony war claims, from WMDs to "no civil war". (I can't wait to see how Rummy explains why just because Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia send in large numbers of soldiers to take sides among the factions in Iraq that doesn't mean it's a "regional war".)

And it's not because Congress has been maintaining aggressive oversight, or because leading Democrats have been opposing the war vigorously, although there have been at least some of the latter. But reality does have a way of imposing its claims, eventually. Even if some take much longer to recognize it than others. Gene Lyons writes today that the Administration cuts and runs from ‘stay the course’ Arkansas Democrat Gazette:

Even with a congressional election less than two weeks off, the Bush White House appears incapable of getting real about Iraq. Over the weekend, the president delivered a Saturday radio address insisting, "Our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging. Our goal is victory." ...

How anybody ever mistook George W. Bush for a tough guy escapes me. But that’s beside the point. What’s important here is something I’ve been predicting to outraged Bush cultists for months: the U. S. retreat from this strategically incoherent, incompetently conducted war has begun. Next comes finding a scapegoat. Needless to say, the Limbaugh-Coulter-Hannity axis will blame the press, left-wing college professors, and Barbra Streisand. Saner individuals will focus on the triumvirate of Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld - along with their political enablers in both parties.

After failures as spectacular as Republican policies have produced during the last six years, the Party faithful are going to have to work hard to rewrite the history of these days more to their liking. But it won't stop them from trying.

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