LIVE FROM THE WAR ZONE

Okay, well strike the previous hyperbole and get ready for something very different. The T-storms are gone and the weather is a bit more clement, so there will indeed be an Independence Day in Washington this year -- and it's all unfolding before me right now.

The neighborhood looks and sounds like a war zone. I am surrounded by smoke and that nitrate-y smell as people are setting off fountains, roman candles, bottle rockets, piccolo petes, old school M-80s and virtually anything combustible save for sparklers. The crowd is easily a thousand strong. Indeed if you let your eyes go out of focus, you'd think the streets were afire and the locals encamped as refugees on the hillside above town. Deployed as a peacekeeping force is the Metro PD; I count a dozen or so officers redirecting traffic and keeping watch. A small fleet of police cruisers block off the streets, and with their sirens silent and lights on the lowest setting, are ready to ferry exploding hand victims to the hospital.

And this is all before the official display on the Mall begins. It gets underway, and of course it's impressive, though one can now see there is one cloud hovering over downtown blocking about half of each spherical blast. I hesitate to downplay the sanctioned violence, because it sure does look cool. But the real action is in the streets.

Half a block to my left a well-armed cabal is competing for attention, flinging bursts of sparks perhaps 50 or 100 feet into the air at irregular intervals. Another brigade down in Dupont Circle appears to be doing the same. Some of these bursts are indistinguishable from images of tracers over Baghdad that CNN gave to us in early 1991. Adding to the martial scene, two marine helicopters pass above the crowd, doing what I'm not sure. Surveying the damage perhaps, but I would imagine they're just getting the best view possible. The battle rages on all sides.

When major combat operations over the Mall cease, the crowd dwindles to perhaps just a few hundred. A procession of cop cars -- I lost count near a dozen -- motor past my building, coming from where I'm not certain and going to where I have no clue. Those parked here earlier remain for the time being.

Meanwhile the unaffiliated teenage militias actually pick up their pace, no longer distracted by the more orderly presentation just ended. Boom! BOOM! Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-BOOM! We're still under siege here in Northwest Washington, and I'm in no hurry for the chaos to end.

It's easy to joke about celebrating your country by blowing up a small part of it, especially when your previous settings for firework displays are tree-lined suburban neighborhoods. And of course, joke I do. But when you can see rockets propelled in Tomahawk trajectories and bursts of flame alighting above rooftops over this still-somewhat classical city, it's much easier to remember that a war which might have looked a lot like this one -- albeit lacking these purple, green and blue hues, not to mention the laughter and clapping -- is what this day is all about. Let's give it up for America, the Boom-iful.

NOTE: If you can't make out any of the images included with this post, well, I've said before that my cell phone camera is all but useless.

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posted by WWB at 10:12 PM |