Watching the presidential debates at school with friends is like watching it with political analysts and pundits, except we tend to forego “Spin Alley” afterwards and go straight to “Inebriation Boulevard.” Many students even play drinking games with rules like “drink every time Kerry outs a member of the Cheney family, chug a whole beer if he claims that Dick Cheney is bi-curious” and “take a shot every time another bullet is lodged into Democracy’s decaying, bloody carcass.” The main goal is to drink until the outrage and frustration subside to an appreciation of what is essentially theater of the absurd. Or, at least until Kerry’s wife begins to look like Bush’s daughters.
Drunkenness and politics can be an addling combination if you don’t have Kennedyesque experience – phrases like “grab me a Rolling Iraq,” “It’s (Zell) Miller Time!” and “This Scud’s For You” echoed throughout my brain. Politics and alcohol – the combination made me flash back to senior year of high school when a girl came up to me to talk about Iraq. Her brother was in one of the first units of ground troops to be sent over after the initial Shock and Awe campaign. Her mother began drinking more and more as the boy’s tour in Iraq was repeatedly extended. She is in the same position as Teri Wills Allison, a mother who writes of “… constant feelings of dread and despair; the sweeping rage that alternates with petrifying fear; the torrents of tears that accompany a maddening sense of helplessness and vulnerability.” Some drink to try to escape. When that dreaded knock on the door–known by all families with a loved one fighting overseas–looms each day as a harrowing possibility, there is no escape.
It’s fun to take a shot when Bush says “nuc-yu-ler.” It’s easier than toasting the mounting number of dead American servicemen, a number which surpassed that grave milestone of “1,000” weeks ago and which increased the most after the President’s brave aircraft-carrier landing under the banner of “Mission Accomplished.” We can drink every time the President tells us that we need to “stay the course” and that things are going well in Iraq, but we can’t for the number of dead Iraqi civilians, as the Ministry of Health was ordered to stop counting them months ago (though a corroborative estimate at this point is around 15,000).
Look at Bush up on the podium with his folksy charm, folksy malapropisms and folksy disregard for life. The theater of the absurd becomes theater of the tragic when you read UNICEF’s new report citing that Iraq’s mortality rate for children under five, which increased more than any country in the world since 1990, continues to increase, despite toppled Saddam statues, the import of miniature American flags, and tales of progress from our leaders. How much does one need to drink to actually believe that President Bush is protecting us? What depths of denial exist in which one can look at the War on Terror and declare victory, or progress, or anything besides utter disaster? In 2003, the number of significant terrorist attacks was the highest it has been in over two decades, according to State Department figures. Terrorists are being created and recruited at terrifying rates and anti-American sentiment is at a new high. Is this what the President meant when he called himself a “uniter”?
Lance Cpl. Edward Elston is from a New Jersey town near mine and is about two years older than me. “I feel we’re going to be here for years and years…,” he says, “I don’t think anything is going to get better; I think it’s going to get a lot worse….We’re always going to be here. We’re never going to leave.” Morale drops with every passing day and every new casualty. There might have been 18 more flag-draped coffins had those GIs in the 343rd Quartermaster Company not refused a “suicide mission” for which they were not properly equipped.
It always gets laughs to make fun of Bush’s intelligence, but that isn’t the intelligence failure that we should really be worried about. This administration knew little about Iraq but had no problem sending young men and women, our friends, our family, over there with false hopes of being greeted as liberators and having a quick return. The New York Times reports that the 38-page intelligence document on post-war Iraq only mentions an “insurgency” in the last paragraph. Take a shot every time Bush stumbles over a word like “subliminal.” Take two every time a lack of intelligence results in the death of hundreds.
It is impossible to stay detached when the men lobbing meaningless sound bites back and forth before their lights turn red are the greatest threat right now to peace and international stability. It is hard to turn it all into a game when that game has such personal and dire consequences. For every dissident who has been investigated by Ashcroft and labeled a terrorist-supporter by his opponents, for every child in Iraq who is malnourished, frightened and suffering, for every American who lives in fear of a new strike against us and for every mother who saw her son or daughter for the last time when they left for Iraq, the decisions that these men make are all too real. Nationalism, alcohol, detachment, denial – these are all distractions to help us cope. Soon, these distractions will run out. Soon, we will be hit by reality and woken up. Soon, a demand for change will emanate from the people at a volume that can never be matched by a ballot. Take a shot.
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