i swim with the fishes cause the fish are alright

There is a car parked outside that has a self-made laserjet printout taped to the inside back window. It is a silhouette of the outline of Iraq, and some pithy statement, "Don't dishonor our soldiers - Stay and finish the job!".

You may have heard of that line, usually when some dispassionate conservative is speaking about Cindy Sheehan. The logic, I suppose, is that over 1,899 soldiers have died in Iraq, so we need to have more soldiers die in Iraq so that the ones who are already dead will not have died in vain. Because, you know, they died to prevent Saddam from using his weapons of mass destruction against us. I mean, to topple a cruel and vicious dictator who tortured his own people in Abu Ghraib prison. I mean, to liberate the Iraqi people and bring them sovereignty, security, electricity, water, schools, and the vote. I mean, to make Iraq into the model democracy of the Middle East where Shia, Sunni, and Kurd live in blissful harmony and the entire region cascades into America-lovin' capitalism like falling dominoes.

Hell, I don't know what I mean. I think last I heard it was to protect the oil fields and pipelines from the terrorists who weren't there until we went and invaded. Whatever. As long as those boys don't die in vain.

So, all I ask is this: What is "the job" and how much is it going to cost? We heard "overthrow a dictator with WMDs, about six months, very few lives, and the country can pay for its own reconstruction." Now we've heard ever-shifting rationales, it's 29 months later, we've lost 1,899 lives (actually more) and thousands of limbs, and it's cost $200 million. So what is it?

Let's even give them the "We have to fight them there so we don't fight them here" point for the sake of argument (as if terrorists can't multi-task). Let's even dreamily delude ourselves into the idea that the three ethnicities who've hated each other for centuries and all desire their own land can somehow be cobbled together into the shining beacon of Middle Eastern democracy. Even ceding those ridiculous pipe dreams, I still ask "what's it going to cost?"

What's the answer, untax-and-overspend conservatives? Bush said "whatever it takes?" What is that? Three more years? Five years? Ten years? Twenty years?

How many lives? Another 2,000? 5,000? 10,000? A Vietnam-like 50,000?

How much treasure? Another $200 billion? $500 billion? A couple trillion?

I wouldn't let a contractor remodel my house without nailing him down to at least some sort of estimate. Yet we're supposed to "stay the course" in Iraq, giving the president a blank check, an open calendar, and neverending pool of twentysomethings, even after every previous estimate has been shown to be fraudulent, even after two-and-a-half years of proven failure and incompetance?

An American serviceman never dies in vain. The act of sacrificing oneself for the ideal of protecting one's county is never a misbegotten act. We must have a military and we must have people willing to volunteer to follow orders without question, or else that military cannot function. In trade for absolute obedience to elected authority, all the military ever asks is that the mission be clear, the goals be achievable, and the deployment of lethal force be used only as a last resort. The serviceman who dies in the line of duty is always noble, even if his leadership is not.

Withdrawing from Iraq would not be a failure of our military. It would not render any dead serviceman's sacrifice unworthy. It would only be a recognition of the failure of our administration and render our leadership unworthy. But since this is the gang that can never admit any mistakes, I have a feeling that many, many more servicemen are going to not die in vain before this is over.



My girlfriend hates bugs, but her hatred is fuelled by something else all the more diabolical than I. I remember there was this fly following me around everywhere I went. He was buzzing around my head as I drank coffee, landing briefly on my shoulder, then taking a few laps around my living room and landing on my head. I tried to shoo him away, but to him my hand was only a game. I didn’t see him follow me as I left home and took the bus downtown, but as soon as I sat down to do some work, there he was, buzzing close enough to feel the breath of his wings and hear them whining like a tiny motor. It continued all day long, though he took breaks to explore.

When I left the librar I stopped and the fly landed on my hand. People will try to tell me it wasn’t the same fly, but I know better.

"You again?" I muttered and sent him flying with a flick of my wrist. But flying is what flies do, and it didn’t disturb him much.

Zig zagging through the air, leap frogging from my plate, to my arm, to my head, and back again, like an annoying puppy who wants to play. When he rested on the edge of the table I stared him down. He rubbed his face with his spindly arms, the way a cat might while lying in the sun, content. Without warning, I swooped toward him with an open palm and caught him in my fist. He didn’t seem to panic, or even be confused. It’s easy to catch flies late in the summer, and perhaps he’d been through this before.

As felt him crawling on my skin, with what seemed to me a little too much nonchalance, I was tempted to crush him. I didn’t, of course, for a number of reasons, but without getting into the Zen of it all, let’s just say I didn’t want to get my hands covered with the yellow snot of fly guts.

I only held him for a few seconds, but that must be like a few months in fly time, and when I opened my hand to let him go, I expected him to rush off and try to make up for the life he missed. Instead, he sat in my open palm long enough for me to change my mind if I’d wanted to. I didn’t, though, and a moment later, he lifted himself straight up like a helicopter, then zoomed over to an empty table across the aisle to regroup and, I hoped, reflect.

The fly persisted, attracted to my head as if it had become a real horses ass instead of just the metephorical one it usually is. I somehow managed to make it through without going completely bonkers, hoping to lose the fly on the way home. As I was sleeping a few minutes ago. I’d fallen asleep with my clothes on, and all the lights on as well. I woke up from the buzz of a fly in my ear.

"Leave me alone," I snapped, his sinister motives finally dawning one me. "I’m not dead yet."

I’m in a rut, and the fly can smell it. He relishes my inertia, anxiously rubbing his hands, anticipating the moment when all forward motion in my life stops once and for all. He’s not trying to tell me something, he thinks it’s a done deal, only a matter of time, and that’s how he can afford to be so bold. But I see him, and I know what a fly buzzing over a body means.

"I’m not dead yet," I said again. And this time I meant it.