334

One of my favorite all time books by an American Author is 334 by Thomas Disch. Thomas Disch wrote science fiction and more accurately, something called speculative fiction. He also wrote gothic horror that was hilariously banal, controversial social commentary plays and childrens books, I'm sure everyone has heard of the Disney animated adaptaion of his book, The Brave Little Toaster.
In 334 he writes of the near future in New York City, fashioning a tale that is almost melodramatically like Dickens. He interweaves the lives of New Yorkers of all classes in the bleak near future of 2025. That seemed like the distant future back in the early 1980's.

A constant backbeat to his story is the news reports and vague references to the "War" which is never ending. A war on Terrorists fought on many fronts and seen on TV with occasional incidents making life slightly more dangerous and providing a little action occasionally on the home front. If you ever read the book, you will be amazed at how many details of his imagined future seem to be becoming our reality today.

I was reminded of the book last week, when at a new conference, White House Press Secretary, Tony Snow, when asked about the future of the War in Iraq, started to compare it to the Korean War and said that we could be there for the next 50 years.
His report was corraborated the next day by a general who said that was a realistic assessment. I also read the comments of Lyndon Baines Johnson as he contemplated further American involvement in Vietnam and how he agonized that he was creating another Korean War situation.

The reality is that this is not Korea. The enemy is not Communist China, which was so easy to label in the simpler world of the late 1940's. In Iraq, we are busy creating the enemy that we will have to confront for the next 50 years if we continue on this path.

I had been thinking about the massive US Embassy Compound in Bagdhad and how I read that it is the only project in Iraq that is coming in on schedule albeit millions of dollars over budget and the documented use of virtual slave foreign labor in the construction. This is virtually a small city within the Green Zone little talked about and never seen. I went to the web site of the architectural firm, Berger Devine and Yaeger and lo and behold, there was a virtual slide show of the architects rendering of tthe Embassy buildings and a plan of the complex. The architecture is massive, unimaginatively ugly and bunker like. There are residences, office complexes, huge recreational facilities, an Olympic size pool with a huge pool house and enough facilities to house and feed a small army. This is a project that speaks volumes of the ambition to establish a permanent presence in Iraq. I would include a link to the web site here, but it was taken off line the next day as a security risk, after it had been up for months.

Curiously enough, after Tony Snow made his comment and the world began to react to it, ABC News posted a story on the comment. When I tried to access the comment, it had been removed. I keep thinking about the history of this war, how nothing has ever seemed to be as it really is... How one reason mutates into another reason...How the administration has released their take on reality in dribs and drabs, carefully managing the flow of information so the public can be conditioned to take the next step.

Are we being conditioned to the idea of a never ending war? Have we lost control of the process completely and Mr. Cheney and Company outsource the entire executive branch of the government? Are we heading towards a bleak future of anonymous authority from a corporate unitary executive? Will I live to see Thomas Disch's Book 334 become reality?