Wool/Copper

Lucky number seven. Or in this case, not so lucky. Yesterday marked the seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Perhaps we should refer to it as the invasion of Iraq by the coalition of the willing. After seven years, fewer and fewer countries appear willing to stay collated. Great Britain and Australia left last summer, and our new President has said that we will be gone soon, but not before we get things settled down a bit first.
One might ask just how we expect to keep things settled down when our very presence seems to keep them stirred up, but such is the way of these things. The expectation continues that by August of 2010, U.S. combat troops will come home, leaving a mere fifty-thousand "advisers." That is more than twice the number of American soldiers in Vietnam during 1972's "Vietnamization" of that war. Perhaps this disparity helps clarify once and for all that Iraq is, in fact, no Vietnam.
Don't tell that to Cindy Sheehan, however. "Arrest that war criminal!" Sheehan shouted outside the White House before her arrest, referring to Obama. Ironically, these were the words she yelled just prior to her own arrest at a march that ended with her and her fellow protesters laying in coffins outside the fence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The challenge for Ms. Sheehan and the rest of us who have grown tired of waiting for the war in Iraq to end is simple enough to grasp: we're just a little too familiar with it. After seven years, it has become part of our national wallpaper. Roadside bombs, sectarian violence, and Operation New Dawn don't jangle our senses the way they used to. "The Hurt Locker" won Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards. The war in Iraq has become mainstream. America's involvement in Vietnam lasted thirteen years. We're over halfway there, and the clock is ticking.