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thedrifter
12-31-06, 10:02 AM
Moving forward, with fewer illusions

By: North County Times Opinion Staff

Our view: Along with 2006, we leave behind shattered dreams and abandoned ideas

Tonight, a calendar will come and go. A ball will drop, corks will pop. Digits will do whatever digits do in this digital age. Noisemakers will blare. Lips will lock. And a year will pass into history and take so many illusions with it.

Most recently, the tragic slaying Dec. 20 of Oceanside police Officer Dan Bessant shattered any illusions Oceansiders may have had that anything other than crime sits atop the city's agenda. The second Oceanside cop to be killed in the line of duty in 3 1/2 years, Bessant's death makes plain that while some Oceansiders still tremble behind curtains in fear of the gangsters next door, relatively minor concerns such as the fate of the Oceanside airport or a $10,200 credit card bill just don't matter all that much.

This was the year that "stay the course" stopped sounding like a credible strategy in Iraq, even to most Republicans. Sectarian strife that edged toward civil war blanketed Baghdad in blood and barbarity, while the number of U.S. military killed there reached 3,000 by year's end.

To listen to Camp Pendleton's Lt. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the Marines in Iraq, or Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who until recently led all U.S. ground forces there, "stay the course" still sounds like it could work. But their voices, however informed, are drowned out domestically, politically, by a growing chorus against the war. The Iraq Study Group's much-hyped analysis, though rife with illusions of its own, helped reorient downward the nation's outlook on a "grave and deteriorating situation."

Anyone paying attention to the Camp Pendleton trials of Marines for their actions in Hamdania and Haditha are also stripped of any notion that this frontierless war presents our troops with anything less than terrible choices. Our brave men and women are too often just a rifle round or roadside bomb away from reckonings no one should encounter.

The resignation of Donald Rumsfeld hours after Democrats won control of Congress in November, combined with growing support for growing the overall size of the military, leaves little doubt that the former defense secretary's vision of a shrunken force will succumb to the harsh demands of personnel-intensive occupation and counterinsurgency.

It's small comfort that our chief ally in the Middle East, Israel, joined us in disillusionment in 2006. This will be the year that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's dream of disengagement, the unilateral pullback from the Gaza Strip and the walling off of Palestinian communities within Israel's borders, fell in the face of a sudden, two-front war. With Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon shelling Israel, the illusion that a state sandwiched between mortal enemies could hope to simply fence off the unruly neighbors and enjoy quiet in their backyard seemed to die for good.

Much closer to home, the Escondido City Council's tough talk against illegal immigrants was revealed for the campaign rhetoric it was. When the council majority voted Dec. 13 to drop their effort to force landlords to verify the immigration status of their tenants, the expensive legal bills were cited as the reason. The cold sting of reality is another likely factor.

In 2006, the San Diego County supervisors were forced to drop their rosy projections of the county's financial footing. New federal accounting rules will soon make the county add health insurance subsidies to its outstanding pension obligations, so the supervisors pressured the county retirement board to slash health benefits for thousands of current and future county employees. Boastful comparisons to the city of San Diego stopped suddenly when supervisors warned of a "ticking time bomb" threatening the county's $7.3 billion pension fund.

That same "time bomb" is ticking for Oceanside, which will grapple in 2007 with the same threat that so scared the county supervisors this year.

Count on other illusions to wither in 2007. For one, the brief burst of bipartisanship that led to landmark legislation out of the state Capitol and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's resounding re-election won't long withstand the already apparent tensions from right and left. Whether the happy talk is silenced by the comparative complexity of the issues atop the state agenda ---- fixing the broken health care system, above all ---- or the refreshing lack of a scheduled statewide election in 2007, it will stop for sure in Sacramento this year.

This may seem a melancholic meditation for a night expected to end in exultation. But it's far better to enter the new year unburdened by illusions than it is to keep laying foundations upon pipe dreams.

Here's to a healthy and happy 2007 ---- but a little healthy skepticism never hurts.

Ellie