Mission Accomplished, Five Years Later

It seems like only yesterday that President Bush got gussied up in his Top Gun Halloween costume, flew to an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego, and manfully announced that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" as a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner hung from the Abraham Lincoln's superstructure behind him.

Five gory years have now passed since that day, and we are no closer to winning (whatever that means) the Iraq War than we were then. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, half a trillion dollars have been spent, and the world's post-9/11 goodwill towards America has been squandered.

And through it all, the White House has put a lot more effort into explaining away the massive arrogance behind that notorious banner than in actually winning the war, repeatedly blaming it on the ship's crew even though everyone knows the White House was responsible.

In January 2007, then press secretary Tony Snow channeled George Orwell and insisted that Bush actually said the complete opposite of what the banner proclaimed, no matter what we mere mortals might remember. "He cautioned people at the time," Snow claimed, "that there would be considerable continued violence in Iraq and that there would be continued operations for a long period of time." Of course, Bush said nothing of the kind, and Snow was apparently hoping no one would take the time to actually, oh, I don't know, look up the speech.

And just this week, current press secretary Dana Perino tried again, claiming the banner actually meant "Mission Accomplished For These Sailors Who Are On This Ship On Their Mission." We all just got it wrong, you see.

Indeed, the phrase "Mission Accomplished" has entered the popular vocabulary as shorthand for "we haven't actually accomplished a damn thing and we have no idea when, how or even if we'll really get the job done." The banner itself has become a symbol of the Bush Administration's arrogant certainty that the president is always right, everyone else is always wrong, and ideology trumps reality every time.

"Other nations in history have fought in foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit," Bush said five years ago. "Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home. And that is your direction tonight."

One wonders whether Bush actually believed what he was saying, or whether he was chortling inside at putting yet another one over on the American people. For all the talk about "troop drawdowns" and "return on success," Bush and his inner circle have no intention of leaving Iraq.

Ever.

Their plans are to turn that country, created in 1921 by British civil servants who drew arbitrary lines on a map, into a permanent gas station for the United States, ostensibly ruled by a puppet government that knows how to follow orders. And by purging the Pentagon's professional officer corps of all but the most dedicated ideologues and yes-men, they have ensured that the next president will have a devil of a time getting us out.

Maybe that's what Bush meant by "Mission Accomplished."