the fourth anniversary of first bombs in the iraq war was yesterday. the anniversary of the beginning of the ground invasion is tomorrow. four years ago today we were surrounded by frothing commentators babbling about "shock and awe"--how iraqis would be so intimidated by the ferociousness of the initial bombing, that they would decide it wasn't worth fighting. there was so much ghoulish excitement about what was, in essence, a mass killing. despite the excitement shock and awe was, in retrospect, the first major failure of the war.
it's funny how the fourth anniversary seems more significant than the third. four years evokes the concept of the presidential electoral cycle, and thus is associated with the notion of accountability. at least it does for me. maybe it's just because there is more of a viable opposition to the war in congress now, but the anniversary seems like a bigger deal this time around than it has the past few times.
anyway, i was digging through my archives and found this post i wrote for the first anniversary (i was a couple of days early). i think over the past three years we've gotten even more used to being "at war" but the war itself still only directly touches a minority of people in their day to day lives. we still are not "at war" in the sense that we were in world war one or two.
