Fulfilled wishes can be bittersweet.

I’m going to write about this article today. Besides being depressing, I see this new development with the Iraq conflict as a big step for the U.S. government. The only reason I say the article is depressing is because as I read, even though I am in no way a fan of what has gone on in the Middle East, I couldn’t help but detect a despairing tone in it. It’s like the government is like a young child who has been told Santa Clause doesn’t exist; the government has, in a sense, given up all their hopes for a positive ending to the conflict. So while part of me has a great deal of respect for the Bush administration, another part of me feels bad for them; they have come to terms with the reality of the situation. Maybe it’s just me, but I think this sympathy comes from the way in which the article was written.

I think that a more liberal individual would have much less sympathy for the administration. At nationalpriorities.org, there is a count showing the total cost of the Iraq War. (It’s pretty cool, you can compare the war costs with spending on housing, education, children’s’ health and other neat things.) As I’ve sat here with the window open, I’m watching the total go up by roughly $1,000 every second. That’s pretty intense. At 6:53:50 pm, it reads $471,449,320,678. I divided that amount by the total population of the United States (303,447,068), and found that to cover the cost of the war, each American would have to surrender $1,553.65. This number first struck me as small, but it’s $1,553.65 from every man, woman and child in the United States. Again, it’s pretty intense. But more importantly than monetary figures, 3,875 have been killed since war began on March 19, 2003. I have to wonder how the families of those killed feel about the government lowering their expectations; personally, it’s almost as if every effort made up until this point is somewhat invalidated.

Really, I guess I would just be curious to see how others interpreted the article. I believe it was written with a conservative bias, and this is why it evokes a certain feeling of remorse for the government.

Or I could just be feeling moody. Who knows?

I’ll conclude with the same point I’ve made many times. The way in which the media portrays the facts has a monumental effect on how these facts are perceived. The Spanish-American War, the Tet Offensive, Watergate, and more recently, The Daily Show/Colbert Report are all evidence of the relationship between the media and overall perceptions.