La Guerre Est Finie by Reid Collins

The slogan on the aircraft carrier was wrong. It should have read, "The War Is Over," and not "Mission Accomplished." And President Bush should have emerged from his arrival jet not in a flight suit but in civilian dress.

The conundrum is underscored by Shelby Steele's "White Guilt and the Western Past" article in a recent Wall Street Journal. An excellent exegesis of the current American cultural ambivalence toward minority peoples and attitudes, but misplaced, it can be argued, when applied to Iraq. The Iraq "war" was prosecuted to the fullest: the Iraqi Army was defeated, and subsequently disbanded. The "leader" of these enemy forces was snagged from his underground hiding place and placed on interminable trial.