As the world gets ready to give its verdict on America’s first preemptive war, political conversation in Washington has turned to basketball.With Iraq on the verge of becoming a free country, Americans feel that there is little left to debate. In the U.S. it is basketball season. Almost every bar and restaurant in the capital has put up televisions. People occasionally glance away from basketball to listen to General Tommy Franks tell U.S. servicemen that “the people of this country (Iraq) will long remember the day you came.Their days of being raped and murdered are over.”To the unpatriotic eye, tanks and sports is a reminder of the huge chasm that exists between the suffering East and the oblivious West. But for Americans, the case for war was never more unambiguous. And it’s not just the right wing Straussians who are cheering. Two out of three Democrats now appear in favour. Americans are now applauding the war. The only problem: we may see a lot more of it.Weak resistance from the Iraqis has made America’s moral crusade to spread democracy even more fervent. Saddam’s call for an Islamic jihad has fallen on deaf ears. Young Arab men may hate the U.S. but they’re not willing to die for a greater Islamic cause either. The neo-conservatives on Capitol Hill knew this all along. That’s why even before the first shot was fired, Washington began rehearsing how to be magnanimous in victory.All the doomsayers in the streets of Delhi, Paris and Berlin predicting massive casualties have been proved wrong. A country as big as Spain reports fewer civilian deaths than Kashmir suffers in a single year.The fact that weapons of mass destruction haven’t yet been found, and few Iraqis are dancing in the streets hardly matters to Americans. Public support is not conditional on capturing Saddam or his weapons. Preemptive strike is not a proof-based doctrine. It’s more of an attitude that America has adopted since 9/11, which is not to sit and wait for terrorists to strike its people. Plus, in a country where the President invokes God after every speech, there is enormous faith that America has chosen the right path and God is on its side. Yet America’s victory was never in doubt. The destiny of the Iraqi people now hinges on how America wins the peace. But no one wants to talk about Iraq’s transition from a brutal regime to a prosperous democracy. What counts is that America has ‘liberated’ Iraq. For a basketball loving nation, that’s worth a dozen Jordan slam dunks.The writer works for Vision, an Italian EU policy think tank. He lives in Washington
