Belated Anniversary Wishes

I forgot. Another anniversary has come and gone without my acknowledgement.
I try to remember – honest I do, but there’s something wrong with me: something missing from my brain, when it comes to birthdays, anniversaries and such.
I should also admit that I have a convenient philosophical objection, to what I think is the endless marketing of anniversaries to sell everything from candy to cars.
Anyway, that’s my excuse.
What’s yours?
From what I can tell, you missed it too.
And I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that this was really more your anniversary than mine.
It was you that made such a big deal of it in the first place.
It was you, wasn’t it, who put up those flags on the overpass?
It was you who overwhelmingly, unabashedly, unreservedly approved of the invasion of Iraq, right?
Surely you couldn’t have forgotten, so soon, this important anniversary?
The end of the war in Iraq!
It’s been four years now, since ‘major combat operations’ ceased.
Don’t give me that sheepish grin.
You can pretend you missed the anniversary, but you can’t have forgotten that first celebration, four years ago, on an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego.
Banners waving, flags flying, the President dressed down in his flight suit.
A dictatorship overthrown, an army defeated, an historic capital city captured, weapons of mass destruction, democracy, shock and awe, salutes and speeches, yadda yadda yadda.
And it only took a few billion dollars and a little more than a hundred American lives.
A bargain!
There hasn’t been an occasion like that – excluding of course Jerry Bruckheimer’s blockbuster production of Pearl Harbor - for more than four years.
So how did you forget it?
Where were you May 1st?
There were no parades, or solemn invocations – at least none that I heard of.
The day passed without fanfare, though later that same evening the President did make an appearance to talk about victory in Iraq, again.
Major combat operations ceased four years ago and, according to the President – any day now, victory will be in sight. In sight like the light at the end of the tunnel, I guess - a railway tunnel. Like a train bearing down on us.
I never thought that you could be nostalgic about war: but I really miss those days, those early days of peace in Iraq.
I miss all the fresh hype, the purple prose, the Country & Western Pop Star Propaganda. I miss the boyish antics of the President. The trips to the United Nations. The charts and graphs. The film footage of troops practicing getting into their biological warfare suits.
It was our own, 21st Century version of ‘duck and cover’.
Remember the ‘Axis of Evil’?
Remember ‘You can run, but you cannot hide’?
No, of course not: you’re quick on the draw, but a bit slow when it comes to the historical facts.
The Axis of Evil was Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, remember?
Today, after four years of what they are defining as ‘minor combat operations’, that Axis has grown.
What we have now, I suppose you might say, are Axes of Evil: a spider web of nations including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Indonesia, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Ethiopia, and a burgeoning terrorist underground.
A week doesn’t go by without a report – usually false, of a major Al Qaeda leader having been captured or killed. We used to have just ‘America’s Most Wanted” to look forward to: now we have “Today’s Top Ten Terrorists”.
A day doesn’t go by without reports of a car bomb, or a suicide bomber.
They have beheadings on YouTube and IED explosions on the Nightly News.
And a minute doesn’t go by without another government official admitting that the case for war was inflated, exaggerated, distorted or invented.
So, again, how could you have forgotten?
Where were you last Tuesday?
You didn’t even send a card, and they have such cute ones these days: cards for every occasion.
Here’s a few from the ‘Humorous Notes for the President’ section:
• “I know I said ‘Give Peace a Chance’”, written on the outside and, inside: “but I didn’t mean just one.”
• Or how about... “I believed you when you said, ‘Major Combat Operations have Ceased!” on the outside, and inside, “April Fools!”
• Or, “You’re not getting older” on the outside, and inside, “you’re just not as good a liar.”
• Or, “Let’s make it official”, on the outside, and inside, “you blew it.”
• Or just a simple “Belated Best Wishes on the Anniversary of the End of Major Combat Operations” on the outside. And inside a date that you can change to match the actual end of major combat operations.
Pick one out. Send it in.
It’s never too late to say you’re sorry.