This is Not War As We Knew It

It is a long, long way from Madison Square Garden to downtown Baghdad. But somehow, suddenly, it doesn't seem so far.

The date - one I always remember - is precise: March 24, 1962. We have an anniversary. Emile Griffith and Benny Paret had already fought twice for the welterweight championship of the world. Griffith won the first one, Paret - an illiterate Cuban refugee - won the rematch. Here was a decider and famous grudge match. They did not like each other. They bore festering animosities. Perhaps Paret could do it again? He almost had Griffith out in the sixth. But then too many hard fights started to tell. He weakened and faded. He began (as Donald Rumsfeld would say) to unravel.

In the 12th round he was trapped on the ropes, too exhausted to escape. The referee - Ruby Goldstein - did nothing. He stood back, let the violence run on. What would be, would be. Griffith hit Paret time after time. And then Paret tumbled, inert, to the canvas. He lay in a coma for 10 days before he died.

So to death and destruction as a TV spectator sport. To another grudge match. To power unravelling and a world referee standing aside. So, on four decades, beyond the shrunken body of Benny Paret, a dumb victim shrouded in sorrow and pity, not shock and awe.

Is the battering of Baghdad quite the spectacle that Mr Rumsfeld and his oddly smiley boss assume? A wondrous show of technical wizardry and precise targeting that leaves only a relatively few of the undeserving dead? A demonstration of American might that makes bad men quail? That's the theory of the thing. Everybody hopes - the omnipresent "hope" word - for a speedy resolution here. Get the guy you hate on the ropes and keep on pounding. But, like the video of that awful 12th, there is no wonder, nor any awe. Just a hypnotised numbness, a queasy feeling of humanity betrayed.

Was it really Dick Cheney, only two-plus years ago, who lectured Hollywood on the perils of gratuitous violence? Where are those fabled weapons of mass destruction? Not pulled from some deep Iraqi bunker yet, not used in the extremity of distress. The weapons that bring this particular mass destruction rain down from American-dominated skies. They show how puny the supposed threat can seem, how feeble strutting columns of third world soldiery can abruptly become. And that, I'm afraid, is a (literally) fatal difficulty.

We are supposed to support our boys at moments like this. We are not supposed to protest or raise our voices. This is war, from Iwo Jima to Kuwait. But such wars - even 12 years ago - had a human element to them. They were fought by men and women, not robots. Is that - the televised skirmishes aside - quite how it appears today?

You don't have to warm to Saddam, or any of his works, for a second. But Republican Guards, even Special Republican Guards, are members of the human race, too. They have parents and wives and children. They bleed, burn and die. But now, it appears, at the flick of a switch far away.

While the blasting goes on, though, so does the protesting: in London, New York, San Francisco and many more besides. Which surprises Downing Street. Nations are supposed to rally at times like this. The Dunkirk, if not exactly the Suez, spirit. But it is obvious, as the night sky over Iraq flashes green and orange again, that General Tommy Franks is right, that this is indeed "a war unlike any other in history" - conquest by remote control. Our boys thus far are but tiny cogs in a trillion-dollar machine.

There's an emotional distancing here. Awe doesn't keep the home fires burning; on the contrary, it drains passion from the contest. Should we be grateful that casualties are relatively low, own goals aside, because human involvement is low, too? Of course. But it also seems too much of a chill calculation. Why not protest? The Tomahawk cruises won't mind. The stealth bombers won't take their bats home.

And that, in turn, begins to produce a different political equation. Politicians and their pundits assume a coming together in national struggle - and a glowing award for valour once the enemy has vaporised. Cue cheering crowds, grateful Shia; cue stockpiles of anthrax discovered, a chastened Chirac - and triumphant elections. George Senior didn't "get Saddam" and lost his job. George Junior intends to get Saddam and keep his in 2004.

Well, perhaps: but here comes that distancing again. Gulf One didn't even help old President Bush in 1992. The economy sunk him, stupid. And, disconcertingly for the White House, America's failing economy is beginning to sink young George as well. One out of two big recent opinion polls shows him losing currently to "any Democrat". The trouble on a parallel Zogby poll is that particular Democrats don't do anything like as well. But Hillary Clinton and Al Gore are both within around 10 points of Bush at the beginning of a war in prosecution (the time when dad was rolling up 90% approval).

Does this mean nemesis, come November next year? Of course not. An absurdly early prognosis, even without putting 9/11 into the mix. But America's deficits are already absurd in another way, and politicians - hard or soft - are mortal like the rest of us.

A war "unlike any other"? Only disconnect. Think how this demonstration of distant obliteration plays in hearths and homes. Do we feel puffed and proud and Churchill-patriotic? Or is there a shuffling, sinking feeling that this isn't true war, in just the same way that Benny Paret's last round wasn't true sport?