Commentary - Jules Witcover: The anniversary waltz

Woe to the husband who forgets his wedding anniversary, and shame on the parent who lets the birthday anniversary of a kid slip by. But thanks to journalistic tradition, Americans never have to worry about missing anniversaries of the important dates in the life of the United States.

This year is particularly noteworthy in the latter regard. We have already taken due note of the 40th anniversary last month of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and are poised to mark the 40th annual remembrance next month of the passing of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Indeed, the year 1968 produced a bumper crop of memorable events, also including President Lyndon B. Johnson’s shocking withdrawal from the presidential race and the brutal rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago 40 years ago come August.

But seldom has there been an anniversary “celebration” so wrought with a stinging political message than the one that has just marked the fifth year since President Bush stood on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” The banner over his shoulder declaring “Mission Accomplished” as he staged a celebratory show at sea continues to mock his boast about the war that he started and so far, according to the Pentagon as of Friday, has claimed 4,064 American lives.

The White House still clings to the lame contention that the phrase didn’t refer to winning the war. Rather, it’s said, it meant only that the Lincoln’s latest trip had been completed — hardly a justification for the president of the United States donning a combat flight suit and landing dramatically onto the carrier deck off San Diego.

Opponents of the war, who have frustratingly seen it fall behind the state of the national economy in the polls as Americans’ principal concern, had a field day flouting the anniversary and the banner as tangible derisions of his hugely premature boast.

Anti-war demonstrators on Friday stretched a huge sign reading “Mission Accomplished?” along the sidewalk in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. on the anniversary. A shorter one noted the American death toll, a prediction that the cost would rise to $3 trillion, and “100 Years” — an obvious reference to Sen. John McCain’s warning that American forces could remain in Iraq as they have in Korea long after that war. Even McCain, however, said of the optimistic banner on the Lincoln that “I thought it was wrong at the time.”

On Capitol Hill and the campaign trail as well, Democratic leaders made the most of the embarrassing fifth anniversary. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Bush’s descent from the heavens to the carrier’s deck and his boast of success in Iraq “perhaps the greatest act of hubris that our nation has ever seen in wartime.”

But with gas prices climbing steadily toward $4 a gallon, the here and now of the tribulations of daily life has seemed to overshadow the incredible estimate that the war has already cost American taxpayers more than half a trillion dollars and counting.

The fact that Bush after five years still has not asked the American people directly to help shoulder that burden in any personal way — except of course those fighting in Iraq and their families left in distress at home — may begin to explain the compliant public attitude.

Even as the president is asking Congress for additional war funding in his continuing piecemeal approach to pay for it, Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill are beginning to question why Iraqi reconstruction should be financed by U.S. taxpayers when Iraqi oil revenues are overflowing. The Senate Armed Services Committee last week passed a bill barring any such American-financed rebuilding with a price tag of more than $2 million. So much for belt-tightening.

Meanwhile, President Bush, wed so indelibly to the war of his invention, has abundant reason to wish he could forget this particular anniversary.