[Mb-civic] The labyrinth of Iraq - James Carroll - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

The labyrinth of Iraq

By James Carroll  |  October 10, 2005

THE ANCIENT myth has it that a person entering the maze will never find 
the way out. As if that were not terrifying enough, inside the maze 
lives the beast whose special appetite is for the young. The maze is a 
cluster of tricks, paths to nowhere, the realm of dead ends. There is no 
escape. The young must fear being eaten alive, but an eternity of false 
exits threatens everyone.

The maze is a daunting metaphor, an image of psychological imprisonment. 
At night, the dream of the maze comes to every sleeper, involving 
movement through a string of corridors that lead only into other 
corridors. Humans can be afraid even in the absence of the thing that 
kills. Not getting out can be terrifying enough. Dreams in which the 
monster actually appears, with child's blood on its teeth, have a 
simpler function -- to awaken the knowledge that the future itself can 
be at risk.

For ancient Athens, the maze was on the island of Crete, and the monster 
was the Minotaur. For America, the maze is in Iraq, and the monster is 
labeled ''insurgency." This is no myth, no metaphor, no dream. The war 
is America's prison. Our politics are paralyzed now because no one can 
imagine the way out. Youthful GIs and Marines hustle from one dead end 
to another, from the false exit of Iraqi ''sovereignty" to the trap door 
of the constitutional vote to the trick mirror of Iraqi armed forces 
that can take over ''security." This string of exitless corridors leads 
our troops ever deeper into the maze, more at the mercy of the devouring 
monster than ever.

Just as Athens sent its boys and girls to feed the Minotaur, keeping the 
beast appeased and far away, so -- just so -- does Washington. But in 
our circumstance, the sacrificial offering of the young is not quite 
working. Here is the ironic surprise that only recently dawns on the 
United States: We have followed our young ones into the maze. We are a 
lost nation, right behind them.

Iraq is far away, but its maze transcends locality. US foreign policy is 
the maze now; so is the evening news, and so are the pages of the 
newspapers that arrive each morning. We sit at our breakfast tables wide 
awake, yet the feeling of dreams is over everything. The corridors of 
American consciousness open only into other corridors. We hustle from 
one threshold to the next, busier than ever, but we never come out. This 
war was the entrance into a world with no exit. Those who oppose the war 
and those who support it are alike in feeling a vast demoralization. And 
if it remains true that, of Americans, the literal violence of the 
monster consumes only the uniformed young, the rest of us have begun to 
devour ourselves.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/10/the_labyrinth_of_iraq/
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