Occupied by war.

We're not in a war, we're in an occupation, says George Lakoff. He proposes an alternative to the War Frame the Republicans use to justify prolonged action in Iraq (i.e. only cowards "cut and run"). The Occupation Frame goes like this:

Our troops were trained to fight a war, not to occupy a country where they don't know the language and culture; where they lack enough troops, where they face an anti-occupation insurgency by the Iraqis themselves; where most of the population wants them out; where they are being shot at and killed by the very Iraqis they are training; and where the U.S. has given up on reconstruction and can't do much positive good there.

The Occupation Frame fits a politically inconvenient truth. Most people don’t want to think of our army as an occupation force, but it is. An occupying army can’t win anything. The occupation only helps Al Qaeda, which Iraqis don’t want in their country since Al Qaeda attracts foreigners who have been killing Iraqis.

And: as the count of American dead in Iraq inches closer to the number killed in the 9/11 attacks--one of the many reasons the Bush administration has used to justify the war--it's worth asking: how's the hunt for Osama bin Laden going? Late last year, the CIA closed the special unit that'd been hunting the 9/11 mastermind for a decade.

Image: Vietnam protest poster, circa 1971