The Iraq War As Metaphor Originally published in Granta 84, 2003. Okay, think of the world as a family: a big, dysfunctional family with a mother, and a father, and lots of sons and daughters and cousins and nephews and nieces. The father is America—he is big and strong, and wants to protect the family. And the mother—the mother is out of town. Or dead. No—the mother is Great Britain, except technically she’s the grandmother, because she gave birth to America. So now America is totally huge, and married to his tiny little mother. Bear with me here. One day the father (America) notices that the lawn, which is Iraq, is looking a little shaggy, and there’s some crabgrass, and something that looks like it might be poison ivy, so he asks a few of his teenage sons—France, Germany, Russia, etc.—to help him take care of the problem. Except they think the lawn doesn’t look so bad, really, and that’s not poison ivy, that’s regular ivy, and didn’t we just cut the grass like ten years ago? So the father gets all huffy and says, “Fine, I’ll do it all myself,” though in the end he gets some of the little baby kids, like Poland and Eritrea, to help out by making lemonade or something. Except the baby kids are actually older than the father, so they’re like really old little kids. Like tiny little old people. Anyway, Dad really goes at that lawn. He cuts it right down to the dirt and hacks away at the crabgrass, and rips out all the ivy, which turns out to be just regular ivy after all. Except now that the grass is gone, actual poison ivy starts growing in, and Dad is beginning to get itchy. So he’s like, “Hey, Germany! Hey, France! Come and help me clean up here, do you want your old man to be itchy for the next five years, and you might get itchy too,” and the teenagers, who are actually quite old, in fact some of the oldest people in the whole family, are like, “Go and by some cortisone, jerk,” and even the little kids are mad, because Dad never thanked them for the lemonade. So— Scratch that. * The world is really more like a zoo. America is the zookeeper, and there are lots of assistant zookeepers, like Great Britain and Germany and France and Russia, who get to do various duties at the zoo. Except they also have outside interests, for instance Russia likes kite-flying, and France likes stamp collecting. Kite-flying being space exploration, and stamp collecting being wine. But at the zoo, America is the head zookeeper. There are a lot of animals in the zoo, and some of them are allowed to kind of walk around the zoo outside their cages, but others, like the lion (Iraq) are locked up. Anyway, a while ago, the old zookeeper, who was the father of the current zookeeper, got in a fight with the lion, but didn’t finish him off. (America is his own father here, but you know what I mean.) So the current zookeeper hates the lion because the lion humiliated his father. And one day he looks into the lion’s cage with binoculars, and he thinks he sees chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. So he sends some monkeys in there to check it out. They don’t find anything, but the zookeeper attacks the lion anyway, and he kicks the lion’s ass, and it turns out the monkeys (UNSCOM) were right, and now the lion has fleas. Diseased fleas. So America has to get a flea collar. No. * The world is an orchestra. America is the conductor. And Europe is the strings, with Germany and Britain as first viola and violin, respectively. And Asia is the woodwinds, and Africa is percussion, etc., etc. And everything sounds pretty OK, when suddenly there’s this terrible squawk from the brass section (the Middle East)—it’s Iraq, on the French horn, and he isn’t playing the right notes. In fact, these are tyrranical notes he’s playing, and they’re destroying the hearing of the rest of the brass section. Let’s make Iraq a trumpet, Iraq can’t be French. Also, the brass section was already in trouble, because the trombone (Israel) and the tuba (Palestinians) keep spitting at one another. No—Palestine is too small to be a tuba. So they’re…a tiny tuba. A tiny tuba that’s been taken apart, so the pieces are all over the place. Never mind. * The world is a human body. America is the brain, controlling everything, and the Middle East is the heart, pumping blood (oil) to the various organs. And let’s have Europe be the lungs, and Asia can be, um, the digestive system, because I like Chinese food. And one day the human body, this guy who is the world, gets chest pains. So he goes to the doctor (United Nations) and says, “Gimme some medicine.” Which is kind of weird, because the if the doctor’s in the world, then he should be inside the body—if he’s outside, it’s like he’s aliens. Anyhow, the doctor, Aliens/United Nations, says, “There’s nothing wrong with your heart, you’re just under stress over what happened to your father.” Because he’s a psychologist as well as a medical doctor. And he won’t give the brain a prescription, so the brain (America) robs the pharmacy… * The world is an anthill, and each country is an ant, and the ants are very busy, doing their various ant-jobs. Some of the ants are black, and some are white, and there are Muslim ants and Jewish ants, and ants who talk in funny accents. But America is the top ant, he’s like a regular ant but approximately forty-seven times larger. * The world is a computer, and America is the screen. No, the operating system, and there are lots of programs (countries) that run on it, until, while the user, who is nobody in particular, is looking at pornography (France) on the Internet (international trade), and gets a virus (Iraq). Which is not to say that Iraq comes from France. That’s wrong. * The world is the solar system, and America is the sun, which shines on all the planets and moons, which are the other countries. And they get their energy from the sun. Which should really be the Middle East, actually. So the Middle East is the sun, except smaller than the real sun. And the Earth is America, and North America is Washington, D.C., and America (the metaphor one, not the real one) is the White House, and Washington, D.C. is George W. Bush. That makes no sense. * The world is an equation in which America is X, and Iraq is Y, and North Korea is Z. And the other countries are numbers, except that some of them are, like, sigma, or the minus sign. * The world is a pie, except that every slice is a different kind of pie. And some of the slices are actually cake, or hamburgers. * No, wait. * The world is a planet. Yes: a planet, hurtling through space, maintaining the optimum temperature, atmosphere, chemical composition, and ocean-to-landmass ratio to support a vast, teeming variety of life. This life is dominated by a single species, itself goverened by rules of infinite and ever-evolving complexity. Indeed, no other species in the history of this planet that is the world has ever exhibited such a dazzling array of contradictory behaviors, to the extent that all one can do, as a citizen of said planet, is stand back and marvel. And let us assume that the dominant group of the dominant species of this planet has a leader, and that leader was elected in a free and fair election, even if technically he wasn’t, but this is all a for-instance, so just let me finish here. And this leader takes a long look at this planet that is the world, and he looks back on its long, complex history (or rather his aides, who represent aides, look back, and brief him on it, although he gets a faraway look in his eye whenever they do), and he clears his throat, and he adjusts his necktie, and he says, simply, “Bring it on.” And all the denizens of the planet say, “Bring it on?” “Bring it on,” repeats the fairly-elected leader (yes, I know, I know), and the denizens reply, “But—” “No buts,” says the leader. “Yeah, but—” “I said no buts,” the leader says. “Okay. However—” “No howevers, either.” “No howevers?” “No buts, howevers, in facts, actuallys, or you-sees,” says the leader, through an interpreter. “No wait-a-minutes, no can’t-we-discuss-thises, no hold-on-a-moments. No heys. No stop-its. No aren’t-you-listenings. No comparisons, metaphors, allegories, or similies. No ambiguities, complications, subtleties, or mitigating factors. No meetings, negotiations, conferences, or questions. No whining. No begging. No threatening or cajoling. No what-ifs, how-abouts, or just-supposes. No nos. Just…bring it on.” “Bring it on,” say the denizens. “Bring it on,” says the leader. “Bring it as fast and hard as you can. Bring while the bringing’s good. Those are your options.” And so, the denizens get together, and the confer over this new state of things, and they are forced to decide whether to bring it on, or not to bring it on. It’s a hard decision—it keeps them up all night. But really, there never was a choice. Ultimately, unfortunately, unavoidably, it must be brought on. And so it is. c2003 by J. Robert Lennon.