At the beginning of the war, when some hawkish liberals -- and the plain hawkish -- were still making a concerted effort to make Bush's bloodlust seem more palatable, they seized upon a quote in a New York Times story (I KNOW! Back when they think it was all lies.) from a man celebrating what they inevitably called the "liberation" of Najaf:
See, invading Iraq wasn't an ill-thought spending spree enriching administration cronies and ultimately taking thousands of American (and Iraqi) lives, it was a way that part of the world not just to liberty, but to the way Americans best like to celebrate it: Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!
Honestly? It's an awesome slogan. Accurate and succinct. There's a reason why the founding fathers put "the pursuit of happiness" right up there with speech, religion and guns -- the reward for fighting for freedom is, ultimately, getting your freak on. As with all great slogans, it caught on. And, like many great slogans, it fit the arguments of its adopters so perfectly that encountering it seemed short-circuit further thinking. Yes it did.
Because apparently no one celebrating the war as "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" read past their new catchphrase. This is the from the graphs immediately after:
Yet when the first round of welcomes to American soldiers and journalists were exuberantly, even affectionately completed, the people in the crowd had a more urgent request than liquor. They wanted water.
There has been none in this town for four days. Again and again, people pointed to the sky, tilted their heads back and pointed to their open mouths. A boy, age about 6 or 7, approached an American reporter and said the two words that were uttered over and over: ''America. Good.'' Then he kissed the reporter on the cheek, shook his hand and pointed to the sky, pleading for water.
Neither soldiers nor reporters had water for the town. The infrastructure has been brought down by nearly a week of battles in and around the town. For now, there is no short-term prospect for any relief, although military officials note that the town's landing strip could easily accommodate C-130 cargo planes.
The longer term prospects turned out to be pretty shitty as well, as Najaf became central, as both a battle site and a strategic headquarters, in the bloody civil war everyone but the Bush administration saw coming. A little over a year later, 300 insurgents were killed in a battle for Najaf. And the water was cut off. Mid-2005, it was the site of one of the occupation's most deadly car bombs. And, providing some tragic semetry, a battle in January of 2007 also resulted in the deaths of 300 insurgents.
Not that I weep for them, but the insurgents' high death tolls in Najaf illustrate how a city that's ground zero in a civil war has little time for democracy, whiskey, or sexy. Fortunately, by this month's elections, the democracy part was back in play, with only red tape and not violence in the way.
This is all a long way of saying that when I red the article in the Washington Post today about U.S. soldiers dancing with Iraqis in a Baghdad night club, I thought, "Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. Finally." I just wish people would have explained to us -- and them -- just how much that drink was going to cost.
