State of Illusion

Pity the poor presidential speechwriter. Each year, as a cold gray sky lowers over the White House, the State of the Union address also looms. Once, a captive television audience could be taken for granted, but now, when cable makes it possible to eschew the pre-empted networks for reruns of "CSI," it's hard to say if there will even be warm bodies in the cheap seats at home. And there is that pesky introductory sentence, the one that traditionally goes something like this:"My fellow Americans, the state of the Union is ... "

Confident. Strong. Stronger than ever.

Dire. Disturbing. Disastrous.

Those last three are the ones the speechwriter will never use. But at the moment they're far closer to the truth.

Let's begin with the war in Iraq. Some complain it was poorly planned. The truth is that it wasn't planned at all. Now that Saddam Hussein is gone, it's hard to understand how an additional year or two of casualties will make a difference in the outcome for the average Iraqi. There's been a flurry of recent rhetoric about a schedule, an endgame, an exit strategy. Some members of Congress and even some in the administration figured out that was necessary; the polls told them so. The result is that sometime in the foreseeable future the war in Iraq will end, not with a bang but with a whimper, having created an entire new generation of terrorists galvanized by an incursion not even its creators can deconstruct convincingly.

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