It took the Americans about ten or fifteen years to convince themselves that they had not been defeated in Vietnam, and another ten or fifteen to convince themselves that they had actually won, as a majority apparently believe today. The retreat from Iraq shows every sign of being just as delusional, but nastier. The American papers’ coverage of Iraq is like the Zionist accounts of Palestine: there aren’t any natives, or at least, none that matter. The result is unrecognisable to anyone who reads any other papers. Here, for example, is William Safire, in the New York Times, and a couple of hundred other papers: “There is never any free ride to freedom. If Iraqis do not take up the opportunity now made available to them by the sacrifice of outsiders, they will slip back into a new dictatorship, with new torture chambers and mass graves.”
So, if the Americans are driven out, they will never be able to admit for a moment that they have in fact been defeated by the Iraqis. There will instead grow up a vicious mythology of the stab in the back. It will be the fault of the Liberals, of the Europeans … Anyone, in fact, who thought this adventure would come out badly will be blamed for its failure.