The big lie

In The Guardian, Gary Younge keanes about American war dead. American's are very moved:

By the time the service was over their steps were inaudible amid the chorus of sobs and sniffles. Vollmer died two weeks ago when a makeshift bomb exploded near his vehicle in Salman Pak, Iraq.

Except the ones who aren't:

The mounting US casualties have relatively little effect on America's views on this war.

Though they really are:

"Public approval rarely gets lower than this," says Christopher Gelpi, an associate professor of political science at Duke university who studies US public opinion and war.

But Bush doesn't care:

as he plans to rebuff popular opinion, political opposition and establishment advice and call for a "surge" of between 20,000 and 40,000 troops in Iraq to "stabilise" the situation.

And the American people hate him for it:

A CBS poll last month showed that 18% wanted to see an increase in troop levels compared with 59% who want them either decreased or withdrawn completely.

And it can't be too soon because - YES! - it's Another Vietnam™:

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" a young John Kerry asked the Senate foreign relations committee in 1971. We have long known it was a mistake. Sadly, the last person to die for it is still a long way off.

The Big Lie in all this is the tacit suggestion that the alternative to war is peace. Peace wasn't on offer. We had, though it is apparently forgotten by the perpetually outraged today, been at war with Iran for 12 years before the 2003 invasion.

Sometimes, the alternative to war is a bigger war, later.