Me on Iraq, One Year Ago

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Me on Iraq, One Year Ago
by J. Edward Tremlett, Columnist

July 28, 2003

"Down On the rANT Farm"

J. Edward Tremlett Every so often you hear about "Easter Eggs" - quirky little jokes and special doodads that people leave lying around in programs. The idea is that, sooner or later, some inquisitive or bored soul will come across it, chuckle, and then let others know what they found. Writers - being people who can never throw ANYTHING away - have them too, but they don't tend to be intentional. Our "Easter Eggs" are things that we write, set aside "for a while," and then come across once more years later - long after that while has passed into the distant past, and the moment of relevancy is either gone, or else changed so much that you can scarcely believe your own eyes.

Well, my backlog just caught up with me - with a vengeance. I've had the Easter Egg moment of a decade, and I am flabbergasted. I am also
wondering what the f@#$ happened to me over the last year, too, so maybe this article is my way of getting my thoughts out and down: soulsearching by way of meeting a deadline. (Something else writers have happen to them - maybe more than we'd care to admit)

Here's the scoop: one year ago - June of 2002 - I sat down at a certain computer, and wrote an article about Iraq. That article was never published in the American Partisan, or anywhere else. In fact, it sat there, on that desktop, for an entire year without being touched by anyone else. And now I've reread it, and I'm still picking my jaw up off the floor.

The article in question was entitled "The Folly of Attacking Iraq." I don't think I'll be showing it to anyone, at least not until I've got this all figured out. For now you will have to take me at my word that (a) It's real, (b) I wrote it, but I completely forgot about it and can scarcely believe it's me, even though I KNOW it is, and (c) it shows me that I was, a year ago, steadfastly against a preemptive invasion of Iraq. And I was apparently against it for reasons that I would later pooh-pooh or shrug off when the time got closer, when it happened, and even now that it's all over and some of the gloss is starting to come off the finish.

The reasons why you never saw it are a little complex. For one thing, the computer I wrote it on has the internet speed matched only by the decaying wits of a brain-addled prizefighter in the last stages of decay. It's a good machine, mind, but it takes forever for Hotmail to grind to life behind its screen. I literally have to wait a half an hour to get an email sent - and that's when it DOESN'T disconnect me. So I have to pick my battle carefully, as it were.

At the same time I was writing that article, I was also beating Lewis Goldberg over the head for some rather nasty tripe he regaled us with. The resulting reply to his reply took up a lot of time in writing, and I suppose I must have been faced with a choice to send one, the other, or both. Given the utter glee my lizard brain gets from watching someone take it on the chin courtesy of yours truly's flaming keyboard of doom, it's not hard to figure out which one would have won.

And there's also another complication: looking over the piece in question, I see that it was hardly special or unique. In fact, it was something that could have been said by any individual wary of our intentions towards Saddam's regime - a bog-standard "screw this nonsense" piece that could have been written by anyone. It broke no new ground, raised no new points, and was the sort of thing several other people said at the time. Some people are still saying it, in fact.

But why was I saying it, then? How did I go from that, in June, to saying I could support it, with conditions in early September, and then saying we should kidnap the bastard later that month? Then, by December, I was saying "Enough!", and trying to make rational argument in favor of it by March.

In other words, I'd gone 180 degrees around in less than nine months. And for anyone that knows me, that is bloody well unheard of. I'm a f@#$ing Aries: my head has had steel beams bent over it and bricks smashed across it. Once I'm set, I'm set, and only a select few things will change my mind. And being honey-tongued by speechwriters with delusions of neo-con nirvana is not one of them.

So where DID the skeptical creature of nearly one year ago go to? Why did he leave me in his stead? How on earth did I come to wear his shoes, sleep in his bed and argue with his friends and family about why this war was the right thing to do? Did he - that is, me - get gobbled up by the "Get Saddam" Meme, or was what might have been common sense (or its opposite) slowly creep up the brain and infect its loops and whorls? Did I OD on Free Republic? Did the victims of Saddam's regime, tossed face or feet-first through wood chippers, come to visit me in my sleep and ask "if not for us, then for who?"

I really don't know. I really can't say. I really have no damn idea. But looking at that piece I wrote, one year ago - as bog-standard as it might have been, and as unremarkable as it still is - I feel haunted by a previous version of myself, now laughing at me and wondering aloud what the hell happened.

And I'm sharing in his confusion. ***

J. Edward Tremlett is a published author, political thinker and self-described "mean-spirited crank." He lives with his wife and two cats in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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Photo of J. Edward Tremlett courtesy of staff files