Iraq And The Renaissance

Interesting to see George Bush finally acknowledging the parallels between the Iraq occupation and Vietnam. That must have stuck in his throat. It's beginning to look as if even the U.S. and British governments--who were the principle architects of the whole Iraq misadventure--have lost the will to keep it going. What I can't understand is how they could start something as potentially disastrous as the invasion without having a proper exit strategy.
If the'd come to me I could've told them in 2002 that this'd be the way it panned out. I was predicting a turgid, drawn-out campaign whose main cost would be paid by innocent Iraqis even then. Me and several million other English people.

It's had some interesting side effects, though, this defining catastrophe of our time. I was talking to some poets and guitar players last night about the cultural renaissance of the last few years, which has happened in Britain and the U.S. (I don't know about anywhere else--perhaps readers can enlighten me), and contrasting it with (or should that be 'to'?) how shut-down and shitty and conservative everything was in the 80s. The average man or woman's still doing what they always did, but just under the surface there's a million great musicians, poets, freaks, all ploughing an expressive, individualistic furrow and pumping the arts and intellectual life full of energy. And though it's been coming progressively SINCE the end of the 80s, I think the war and the subsequent occupation is what really unlocked the renaissance. I could be wrong, but I doubt I am! The war showed those running our countries (who, let's not forget, are nominally at different ends of the political spectrum), as they really are, and not as they like to pretend to be in more peaceful times. You can forget who the merchants of death and cant and hypocrisy are when the worst they're doing is rationalising hospital closures or bullying the unions (well, you can if you're a jackass); but when they're on tv in their suits lying to justify invasion and occupation of a sovereign country--with all the attendant carnage--they are revealed in their monstrous selves. And that helps people understand the true, oppressive, vicious nature of the system we are living in. You don't want to be a part of that do you kids?
"The Reactor hath hid himself thro envy. I behold him. But you cannot behold him till he be revealed in his System," as Blake says in Jerusalem.