For Iraqis, soccer provides a much-needed respite from the ravages of their daily reality. Nowhere was this more in evidence than at the 2006 Asian Games, where the Iraqi soccer team finished in second place, narrowly losing out, 1-0, to Qatar in the final. En route to the Dec. 15 final, the Iraqis defeated somoe very respectable teams, including Uzbekistan and the heavily favored South Koreans; the New York Times says the people celebrated each victory with several minutes of sustained gunfire “that etched the sky with the red streaks of tracer bullets.” At the end of the tournament, the Iraqi television channel that carried the games played a long montage filled with highlights from past victories, with the obvious intent of filling the Iraqi people with some national spirit, despite the country’s currently fractious and violent political climate. Soccer is once again doing its job; whether a country’s people are poor, its government corrupt, or in the midst of a war, “the simple game,” as its British inventors called it, has always been uniquely able to kindle national pride. Unsurprisingly, the fighting between the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds subsided on game days, when all sat around the nearest television they could find to support Iraq in its effort to take home some semblance of national pride. This they achieved in a beautiful style, the country’s newsmen said. “You are heroes,” one commentator declared. “Second is a beautiful position.” After the games, grim reality has once again taken hold, making December one of the year’s deadliest months of the Iraqi insurgency. The boycott on club soccer also persists due to the imminent threat of violence. “We Iraqis don’t have much fun,” one citizen told the Times.