actually, it’s may day. the soviet high holy day when the workers’ tanks would roll proudly through red square. in recent years, anarchists have tried to de-sovietize it by relating it’’s origins to an episode in chicago when some german anarchists threw a bomb at some cops, killing one and injuring seventy bystanders. may day is an unblemished window into what progressives value and choose to celebrate.

this year the progressive left have stumbled upon the idea of celebrating by focussing their energies on repeating just one of their favoritest bumper sticker tropes throughout the day: “mission accomplished”.

“mission accomplished” is an odd rhetorical duck. progressives chant it over and over the way mental patiets repeat the word “bugs”. it is like an anchor which sinks them to the depths oof dark hind-brain anxiety. one recalls the famous mike mcentee video in which one youtube user created from whole cloth a conspiracy by the whitehouse to erase “mission accomplished” from the public concious ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkRHki5P6fc ).

progressives strain to impart “mission accomplished” with a complex raft of metatextual meanings, none of which particularly resonate with the general public; it is a “lie” in the new progressive coinage whereas it signifies mistakenness, it demonstrates bush’s insulation from reality, it demonstrates bush’s arrogance and the sort of frat-boy over-confidence about war which only recalls his status as “chickenhawk”.

but none of these frames hold much water.

of course, when president bush landed on that aircraft carrier in a flightsuit he had worn before in the service and had every right to don again, and delivered a congratulatory speech to the military members present underneath a banner carrying the words, “mission accomplished”, a signifigant point in the mission had indeed been vaulted.

or are we confused? saddam remains in power? his republican guard are still at their dayjobs shuffling paperwork and removing toungues? no. they had been utterly defeated, the statues pulled down , the pallaces smashed open and their contents flowing into ordinary iraqis’ hands. saddam would live in a hole in the ground with a suitcase of getaway money for the next six months, only to be pulled out by the scruff of his neck and busted in the face by a former subject.

that was as good a time as any to applaud the men and women who made it happen and let them know that they had accomplished something. but an important thing which get’s lost in the reccolections of the “mission accomplished” speech; the words “mission accomplished” appeared no where in it. in fact the speech prepared by the whitehouse goes on at length about coming struggles to set up a government and other challenges of occupation…

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html
Quote:
We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We’re bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We’re pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We’re helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq.

the words “mission accomplished” appeared only on a banner hung from the carrier’s controll tower. that banner, and in fact the entire event, was not the rosey misunderestimation of a civilian leader for the benefit of political grand-standing, but rather from general tommy franks.

Quote:
…it was not too long after the 9th of April when the statue came down, so–maybe a couple of weeks that in a conversation with Secretary Rumsfeld, I said there is no more army, navy, air force here. Major combat, this is a done deal. And I’d really appreciate it if you’d have the President, you know, announce that.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0408/16/pzn.00.html

franks explained in his subsequent autobiography, american soldier, that the point of the speech was to signal to un member states who had opted out of the invasion but wanted to be involved in the reconstruction, that the time had arrived.

Quote:
“That was not so everyone could have a victory lap,” Franks said in a telephone interview Monday. “We’d been given to believe that once major hostilities were over, we would have lots and lots more help from the international community.”

http://polipundit.com/index.php?p=3604

their metanarrative about “mission accomplished” defeated by the hard light of fact, one still wonders why pprogressives go about twitching and mumbling the words.

the reason is that progressives aren’t responding to the secondary meanings of “mission accomplished” at all. instead they are being affected by the direct meaning.

progressives wanted then, as they do now, for the u.s. to lose. catastrophicly. many, such as george galloway and sire of the domestic “antiwar” movement, ramsey clark, diidn’t just want an american defeat, but a ba’athist victory. when michael moore illustrated the cover of his book, “dude where’s my country” with a parody of a statue of saddam in being pulled down in baghdad a few weeks before the “mission accomplished” speech in which moore pulls down a statue of president bush, it was because moore identified his fate with saddam’s.

and so it is with most other progressives. the words “mission accomplished” wound them directly because they hold the idea of the united states accompishing anything positive as a defeat for themselves.

so that’s how they’re going to spend the day. be sure to spend your doing something else. i’m going to defy the anti-market roots of the day by buying a new hard drive made in malasia and shipped from singapor.

jummy on May 1, 2007 at 2:01 PM

i was watching on the news last night about some illegals grousing about a raid against, not illegals, but a identification counterfitting ring.

one guy being interviewed said, “they can’t just treat us like second class citizens.”

think about that one for a minute.

jummy on May 1, 2007 at 2:05 PM

Tim Burton on May 1, 2007 at 2:07 PM

bingo!

jummy on May 1, 2007 at 2:08 PM

“The military Mission has long since been accomplished” — Harry Reid, April 23, 2007

jummy on May 1, 2007 at 4:18 PM

http://kucinich.com/kucinich/index2.htm

heh.

jummy on May 1, 2007 at 4:33 PM