John Kerry said:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Clearly Kerry's comment was directed toward a president who, according to the clumsy joke, did not study or do his homework and therefore became stuck in Iraq. But the comment evades the bigger truth. The war is not a result of miscalculation or lack of foresight or education, which does account for a good deal of what is wrong with the current state of affairs in American governance. But the perpetrators of the war knew what they were doing. This war is not an uneducated blunder. It's a crime.

Kerry did not insult the troops. He gave the wrong insult to Bush. The line was confusing only because the real truth is bigger and more grotesque and beyond that - there is nothing funny about being stuck in Iraq - no matter how one construes the "joke."

In fact, like a Rorshach test, the reaction to Kerry's mangled comment exposed the truth of what the White House most likely really feels about the troops. The people ready to pounce, John McCain included, heard what THEY must believe about the troops. Only people who go to nauseating lengths to say "the best and the brightest" each time they speak of the troops must have, just beneath the surface, the perception with which they are trying to slime Kerry.

Only those so careless as to put the fate of young soldiers into the sphere of Bush decision-making are the ones who disrespect the troops. Of course, Kerry was one of those who, with his vote, put the lives of the troops in jeapordy. His apology should be for the vote, not the comment.

Bush says Kerry should apologize to the troops who, as Bush says, "are plenty smart." Kerry says it is Bush who should aplogize to the troops for not planning properly - for not giving them the armor or weapons they needed - for not sending in enough troops. Still - not the point. He should apologize for the war. In fact, in a sane universe, Bush should be tried for the war.

But to say the war itself was misbegotten and criminal would invite the question - are you saying the soldiers who died, died for nothing? Are dying for nothing? The question is as impossible as the answer that one dreads giving.

Bush has all of us stuck in Iraq. And it's not because he didn't do his homework, or study hard, or make an effort to be smart. Kerry didn't insult the troops - he insulted the larger truth. We're not stuck in Iraq because Bush didn't apply himself in college. We're stuck for reasons that only Bush knows and that only Bush under oath should be forced to tell us.

Bill C. Davis is a playwright. www.billcdavis.com

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