"going against our own national narrative"

Jon Carroll writes for the San Francisco Chronicle at SFGate.com. He's very good. Here's some of today's column:

So I was watching "Die Hard" the other night, the original one with Bruce Willis being Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman being an extremely fine villain with a wandering German accent, and I concluded once again that it's one of the best-constructed action movies ever made. It has the old unity-of-time-place-and-action thing, proving that Hollywood still pays attention to Aristotle all these years later.

One of the themes is that large bureaucracies can't do much of anything, that small bands of committed humans can do a lot more and that one brave and loyal man can do most of all. ...

This is a classic American story - the first "Rambo" movie made exactly the same point. The lone fighter is the good guy and will win; the heavily armored minions are the bad guys and will lose. Also: A small group of committed men - see "Rio Bravo" - will also beat minions.

In Iraq, we're the minions. We're going against our own national narrative.

Carroll goes on to say,

All of which reminded me of a recent article in American Heritage magazine by Jon Grinspan comparing the jeep used in World War II with the humvee used in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...

Here's Grinspan: "Yet the Humvee's biggest drawback may actually be the false sense of security it imparts. American troops, many military theorists now argue, are too removed in their vehicles, fighting for Iraqi hearts and minds with a drive-through mentality. The open-air jeep meant that soldiers could, and had to, interact with the people of occupied nations; the closed, air-conditioned Humvee has only isolated American forces from Iraqis. This is even more of a problem with the MRAP, which offers only small, armored windows to peek out of. Though the tactics of the current surge seek to get troops out of their vehicles more often, many politicians involved in the debate over Humvees assume - perhaps erroneously - that more armor means more safety and success."

It seems to me that "a false sense of security" describes a lot of our mission in Iraq. We thought that "shock and awe" would rout the enemy; we thought the democratic ideas would rout sectarian divisions; we thought that patriotism would engender idealism in our civilian contractors. Secure in those beliefs, and protected from opinion on the street, we plunged on in air-conditioned splendor, protected from all reality.