Change the frame-rate

...and you change the context.

This from today's WaPo:

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A Bloody, Devastating Day: Violence Kills 72
Officials Say Rebels Seeking to Exploit Political Uncertainty
By Jonathan Finer and Bassam Sebti
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 12, 2005; Page A17

BAGHDAD, May 11 -- The laborers in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit walked toward the slow-moving car before breakfast Wednesday morning, hoping that someone inside might offer them a day's work. Instead, the vehicle erupted in a fiery explosion that cut them down.

About 40 miles north and two hours later, dozens of young men outside an army recruitment center in sleepy Hawija met a similar fate when a man ran toward them and detonated explosives he had strapped to himself. And here in the Iraqi capital, four car bombs shook the city before noon. After one of those explosions, a sniper fired on Iraqi police who arrived on the scene.

In all, at least 72 Iraqis died across northern and central portions of the country Wednesday. The death toll over the past two weeks neared 400, making it one of the most violent periods since the U.S. invasion two years ago.

We know – we know – at a basal level what is going on in Iraq. But it’s not Stalingrad...and it’s not Valley Forge…and its not the Chosen Reservoir. We lack the proper metaphor. So what is it?

It’s Tet. I know you've heard it before, but it's Tet. And how does the "rebuttal" to that line of arguement usually go?

No it’s not. What an absurd thing to say! What a terrible, disloyal thing to say. Tet took place simultaneously, all over South Vietnam. It involved hundreds of thousands of enemy troops and lasted for a matter of weeks.

This is bad, but not terrible.

Well, it's not about the numbers, but here they are anyway…

1968 Tet Offensive
US Forces killed 1,536
U.S Forces Wounded 7,764

Iraqi War to-date
US Forces killed: 1610
U.S Forces Wounded: 15000 – 38000


At every turn, we are reassured that the end is near or the insurgency is teetering on the brink of destruction. Always on the verge of annihilation. Just one more city flattened. A few more prisoners electrocuted. A bit more street-level Shock and Awe. One more transition between something pre-pre-pre-transitional and something pre-pre-transitional. One more corner to turn, and the Riders of the Purple Digits will sweep to power and the “few regime dead-enders” will crumble into dust.

Or, in a miracle of doublethink, in practically the same breath, we get the exact obverse. We get the latest dance remix of “Flypaper” Version 2005/b. As the countryside fills up with freshly radicalized jihadis just aching to murder The Occupier, we are treated with a straight face to this Peewee Herman “I Meant to Do That” Strategy.

Which, if it were true, wouldn’t we be glad Syria and Iran is letting “terrorists” into Iraq? Instead of calling on them to close their borders, if there were even a grain of truth in “Flypaper”, wouldn’t we be thrilled that they’re unloading Bad Guys into Iraq like iPods onto college campuses?

Shit, wouldn’t we be paying them to do it?

No, we're being lied to and the lies are running thin and threadbare and the darkness beneath is beginning to leak through. We don’t know what to do. We don’t know who our enemies are, where they’ll strike next or how to stop them.

We don’t know how to win, or what winning could even look like anymore.

We want it to be over -- like we were promised by that Nice Man in the White House -- and yet it drags on and on and on.

Tet was not about numbers, it was about psychology and momentum. About convincing the Americans that the enemy was willing to endure staggering kill-ratios just to kill us and deprive of victory, by whatever means necessary and fuck the cost.

Fire up your mental DVD of January 1968, but keep your thumb on the “Pause/Skip” button.

This is Tet…in slow motion.

The is Hue.

One. Agonizing. Frame. At. A. Time.