Games With Consequence

When I was kid (and actually up until early adulthood) I adored jigsaw puzzles.  Yeah, I blame my Mom.  I loved them; I adored the task of putting them together and felt an overwhelming sense of pride at the beauty of their completion.  A couple of times, not too many, I've taken three puzzles and dumped them onto the table or floor.  All the little pieces mixed in, they were very difficult to construct.  I never failed, but it was a wondrous challenge.  It took time and patience, care for each image and love for the goal at the end.  As always, you start with the borders, and build the frame of the picture that will appear within.

Now imagine, if you will, doing that with the self-proclaimed 'hardest puzzles in the world'.  You've seen them, no doubts.  What makes them hard is that they are all one color, a solid to be built.  The most common one is all white, though I've seen black and red as well.  Imagine dumping three of those onto a flat surface and attempting to put them together.  It's possible, I'm certain, but I'd never attempt such a thing.  What you'd get at the end is three homogeneous rectangles (or circles) all screaming at you that you've wasted so much time to build geometry of identical flavor that you could so easily have just purchased in a sheet.  I haven't the arrogance to think that I could perform such a feat, nor the interest to do so.  I'm certain that someone has done so, but they've done it only to say that they could.

If we can find such an individual, let's put them in charge of our efforts for Iraq's reconstruction.  I'm serious.  Do it.  Only a person who can recognize borders based on such detail as simple fit could have the skills to re-create a country where so many people don't fit with each other.  Our founding fathers tried it, and failed.  All of their collective effort dealt not in the least with black folk.  It took a civil war (and a hard ass mallet) to create the rough fit to the American puzzle.  Iraq doesn't offer the obvious clues of skin color, yet we seem hell bent on constructing a country of disparate pieces that will somehow all get along.  It's like taking all of those puzzles and making them one.  If the tabs don't fit, cut them off.  If the fit is close, hammer it down.  We can't do this, people.  Iraq was a country only because a hard-ass forced the pieces together through pain and fear.  That is gone.  The puzzle is broken, now, and all those folk want is a good fit.  I call that civil war.  Don't you?  If not, why not?

We can't hammer them into what we want them to be. The wise man would enable them to be what they want to be, such that we can trade and work with them all.  We could admire the beauty of what we've enabled, but that won't happen as long as we feel we are in control.  We aren't, and haven't been for some time.  If we could find the dude who can build all three puzzles, we would be so very much better off than relying on the impatient who smack the pieces together in rough conformity to please our petulant desire for completion.

When I was young, I was also very very good at the game of chess.  Today, I probably couldn't beat a ten year old; but back then I was very good.  The best college party I ever attended grew up around me trying to beat a chess machine set to master level.  I won, but not for many hours, and we were all very drunk by the end of it.  (And to the blond who was trying to distract me by licking my ear, go-damn!  You were hot!  It's too bad that I had a girlfriend at that point, and even worse that I didn't know she'd dump me a week later.)  Getting back to the topic, I used to play with a ... guy (I will never call him friend) ... named Tommy Franks.  I beat him consistently.  And every time I announced "Checkmate", he would spout the same bullshit:

'Where there's a will, there's a way!'

He would stare at the board for an hour, trying to figure out how he could win the unwinnable.  Right.  Sure.  Whatever.  Here's the truth of it, the thing that most can't abide hearing; when you're beaten, you're done with that game.  Move on.

This is what we have in Iraq.  Our leaders called a game they thought they could win.  They didn't,  because they didn't understand the complexity involved in their unrealistic view of "winning".  They relied on the dictum "where there's a will, there's a way!"  No.  Sometimes, there really isn't.  Sometimes, you've met Checkmate.  You pulled a strategy that has been defeated because you didn't expect what was  obvious to others ...  Suck it up; move on.

The war against those who wish to kill us continues.  But that isn't what the leaders want you to focus on.  They want you to clap harder such that Tinkerbell fly again.  They want you to believe the bullshit:

Where there's a will, there's a way!

Sometimes, there isn't.  Move on.

Comments

[Mark]

And now we try something from the middle ages. Maybe we need a mote monster.
Trenches plan to secure Baghdad, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5349398.stm.

[Nancy]

Great post, Sir. I admire your writing skills!

[Mark T]

I would not be surprised if there are those within the administration and in Israel who would be quite happy to see Iraq's factions scattered to the wind. Iraq presented the only credible threat to Israel in the Middle East.

[Justin]

You sir, do most definitely have a way with words. Well said, well said indeed.

[Kindigulous]

Bravo! I heard someone make an analogy on NPR the other day that this so-called "War on Terrorism" (i.e., Afghanistan and Iraq) is quite similar to the Civil War. That's just so wrong on so many levels, I wasn't sure where to start...so I changed the channel!

More interesting is the subject of governing large bodies of people. California is larger than many countries, and I believe that some of the problems we are having in this state is the result of being too damned large to govern effectively. Maybe this is also true of countries--especially those without a resilient infrastructure.

With respect to your puzzle analogy...a puzzle is solved because someone WANTS it to be solved. It takes effort. It tends to go faster, perhaps, with two people working together with the same goal. This "democratization" effort we're spearheading in the Middle East is duplicitous. We want it to be resolved, but only *if* we can have some type of advantage as a result. It's as if we're trying to solve a puzzle and the border pieces are intentially missing...

[Jon]

I really don't think Bush & Co have any interest in solving problems. Their motive is to exert authority and power, nothing more.

Sounds absurd, but I think it fits the facts better than the idea that they have good intensions yet fail over and over. Talking tough is not a tactic used to reach their goal, it *is the goal*.

These are evil men (and women of course).