My favorite inside source finally got around to returning my call. Ananias Ziegler, media relations director for the Committee That Really Runs America, even apologized and explained. “Sorry, Quillen. I was tied up with the Iraq Future Study Group.”
“Wow. I didn’t know you were part of something as important as the Baker-Hamilton Commission. I’m impressed.”
It never hurts to compliment a source, but Ziegler sounded grumpy. “Not that commission. It’s just eyewash with a bunch of CYA options. I was working with the real Iraq Future Study Group, the one engaged in a truly significant project.”
“What could be more significant now than charting America’s course in Iraq?” I wondered.
Ziegler sighed. “Figuring out who gets the blame 10 or 20 years from now for ‘losing Iraq,”‘ he said. “That’s where the political edge lies, but we have to lay the groundwork now for good spin later on.”
“Forgive me for feeling confused here,” I began.
Ziegler cut me off. “Go back to the end of World War II. America had just won a hard two-front war. You’d think the dominant political party in that great victory would have been unbeatable. But instead, the Democrats got put on the defensive.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “There were all those charges and hearings in 1949 about ‘Who lost China?’ after Mao’s army won the civil war against Chiang Kai-Shek’s.”
Ziegler’s tone got more pleasant. “Now you see it. It doesn’t matter how corrupt Chiang’s regime was. Pin the blame all those striped-pants double-domed Ivy-leaguers in the U.S. State Department, and it can produce some big political careers.”
Like Richard Nixon’s, I thought, but instead I brought up Cuba.
“That took some delicate spinning,” Ziegler said. “Castro marched into Havana in 1959, while a Republican was president of the United States. But we finessed it by making people think that it all happened on account of Herbert Matthews, a New York Times reporter. Remember those posters that had a picture of Fidel and ‘I got my job through the New York Times’?”
“So the Ivy Leaguers lost China, and the media lost Cuba,” I summarized. “Who lost Vietnam?”
“You jackals in the evil mainstream media portrayed the 1968 Tet offensive as a triumph for the Vietcong. You wouldn’t listen to the authorities who said this was really a major defeat for the Vietcong.”
I protested. “The same authorities who kept telling us they could see the light at the end of the tunnel?”
Ziegler cut me off. “It doesn’t matter much now, does it? We’ve got it arranged. The loss of Vietnam is a toss-up among the media, the protesters and the drug-addled officer-fragging baby-boomer soldiers.”
“But were China, Cuba and Vietnam ever really ‘ours’ to lose?” I asked.
“Silly question,” Ziegler harrumphed. “Now as to Iraq. We’ve got the big victory moments, with the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein and the president standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier on May 2, 2003, in front of a banner that said ‘Mission Accomplished.’ Clearly we had achieved victory in Iraq. But now the ground situation has deteriorated. Somebody has to be at fault, right?”
I saw his point. “So who will it be? The people who got us into this war without a viable occupation plan?”
“No, of course not,” Ziegler growled. “But trust me, we’ll find somebody to blame for losing Iraq. The right choice will give us political traction for decades to come. We’re on top of it.” Then he excused himself and hung up.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
