Stardate 20030407.1644

(Captain's log): David writes:

After the fashion of "The Six Days War," I recommend that we call this "The Three Weeks Quagmire."

Let journalists and future historians explain to their readers how the word "quagmire" and a war of only three weeks were associated.

Spread the meme.

I think Daryl Cagle explained it quite adequately in a single panel, on 20030328:

And the omnipresent Mark Steyn put it this way:

By Thursday, with liberated Iraqi lads and British Royal Marines enjoying friendly soccer matches, and the Third Infantry Division knocking on the gates of Baghdad, and the Scottish Black Watch swapping their bulletproof helmets for the jaunty tam o'shanters they'd wear for a stroll round Loch Lomond, and Shiite ayatollahs issuing anti-Saddam fatwas, even the Times was forced to concede that the war might actually be going rather well. As their editorial put it that morning:

"After bitter bickering over the adequacy of the invasion force and a delay caused by blinding sandstorms and attacks on the supply lines, the allied campaign in Iraq has finally begun moving again."

"Finally"? At the time the NYT geniuses typed that line, the war was less than two weeks old. "Finally"? This is the same paper that's been solemnly deploring the "rush to war" for almost a year. Maureen Dowd deplored it last Aug. 21, and John W. Dower deplored it on Oct. 27, and Nicholas Kristof and Bob Herbert, and finally on March 3 the Times published a magisterial editorial headlined, with the wit and inventiveness for which the paper is renowned: "The rush to war." A 14-month "rush to war" is too hasty and precipitous, whoa, hold the horses, but a 14-day war is interminable?

Unfortunately, these things have a tendency to name themselves rather than being susceptible to any deliberate naming. "Operation Desert Storm" was a reasonably catchy title, but eventually Americans came to call it "The Gulf War". (As if it was the only war which anyone had ever fought in the Gulf.) I suspect the current operation will end up being called "The Second Gulf War" or something equally prosaic. Somehow it seems a shame that we should end up giving such uninspiring names to places and times where we think the issues are so important that we're willing to send our young people fight, and kill, and die.