The War
I don't write much about American foreign policy in general and the war in Iraq specifically on this blog. It's not that I don't consider the issue(s) important, but I simply don't have much in the way of original commentary to add to the conversation. Last spring, I suggested we give the occupation in Iraq exactly one more year.."and not a day more"..before pulling out, as a means of motivating the very obviously unmotivated Iraqi government and security forces into taking their own national autonomy seriously. As long as the Iraqis looked at American occupiers as their "welfare army", I opined, there would be nothing in the way of progress on the horizon for either us or them.
The past year has helped convince a great number of Americans to embrace that philosophy, but it has not changed the prevailing wisdom of our elected officials enough to let go of their foolish pride and pie-in-the-sky fantasies of "military victory" in Iraq, despite conditions that are infinitely worse now than they were last year at this time. Rather than moving towards withdrawal, the United States is now inevitably committed to a "troop surge", a ploy virtually nobody expects to work, but may allow elected officials (and the Bush administration in particular) a deferment of the day of reckoning until after the 2008 election. Even recent converts to the "war was a bad idea and we need to get out" ethos, particularly on the Republican side, buckled to the party line when asked to put up or shut up on denouncing the administration's kamikaze escalation. Chuck Hagel and John Warner ended up looking like the biggest buffoons, ultimately voting to cease-and-desist in the debate of the very anti-war resolutions they co-signed. Why'd Hagel and Warner vote for cloture after all their recent bluster? Because Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell told them to!
As a Democrat, the absolute idiocy of the Republican Party's near-unanimous rubber stamp for digging the hole deeper makes me want to jump for joy, knowing that the two-thirds of Americans who disapprove of the President's "surge" will rebuke the GOP once again in 2008 for their tone-deafness on Iraq. But there's more than a partisan chess match at stake here. Our Iraq policy has cost more than 3,000 American lives, anywhere from 60,000 to 150,000 Iraqi lives, a half a trillion dollars, and America's reputation in the world. Chuck Hagel, back in those quaint days when he paid lip service to his opposition to administration policy, referred to Bush's proposed troop surge in Iraq as "the worst foreign policy blunder since Vietnam." He was wrong. The idea to invade Iraq in the first place was the worst foreign policy blunder since General Hannibal "forgot the siege equipment" on his march into Rome. We've paid for it dearly for the past four years and we'll continue paying for it for the foreseeable future. The best of all bad outcomes is that we'll pay for it less severely if we face the music and set a timetable for imminent withdrawal.
There are alot of doomsday scenarios about the cataclysmic consequences of prematurely withdrawing from Iraq, and some of them are pretty persuasive (on the other hand, we finally pulled out of southeast Asia 32 years ago amidst similar doomsday rhetoric, but every country in southeastern Asia today, particularly Vietnam, is at relative political peace and are booming economically). But what I've unconvinced about is that the same horrific consequences won't come to pass even if America stays. They've been happening so far, with the population centers of Iraq turned into a cesspool of sectarian warfare despite an allied troop presence of more than 100,000, and with Islamic militants from throughout the Middle East crossing the desert for their opportunity to advance their jihad and embarrass the United States. Could things really get that much worse if we left?
I don't pretend to know the answer to that, but I do know that things have gotten substantially worse since my previous call to set a timeline for withdrawal 10 months ago. And when the foolish pride of a President and the political party subservient to his "legacy" is too insecure to even allow debate on the Senate floor about the practicality of pressing forward with existing policy, it tells me that the worst possible scenario in the minds of our elected "warmakers" is the political embarrassment over being wrong. So long as that is the case, American foreign policy is in considerably greater peril than if we were to simply withdraw from Iraq tomorrow.
The past year has helped convince a great number of Americans to embrace that philosophy, but it has not changed the prevailing wisdom of our elected officials enough to let go of their foolish pride and pie-in-the-sky fantasies of "military victory" in Iraq, despite conditions that are infinitely worse now than they were last year at this time. Rather than moving towards withdrawal, the United States is now inevitably committed to a "troop surge", a ploy virtually nobody expects to work, but may allow elected officials (and the Bush administration in particular) a deferment of the day of reckoning until after the 2008 election. Even recent converts to the "war was a bad idea and we need to get out" ethos, particularly on the Republican side, buckled to the party line when asked to put up or shut up on denouncing the administration's kamikaze escalation. Chuck Hagel and John Warner ended up looking like the biggest buffoons, ultimately voting to cease-and-desist in the debate of the very anti-war resolutions they co-signed. Why'd Hagel and Warner vote for cloture after all their recent bluster? Because Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell told them to!
As a Democrat, the absolute idiocy of the Republican Party's near-unanimous rubber stamp for digging the hole deeper makes me want to jump for joy, knowing that the two-thirds of Americans who disapprove of the President's "surge" will rebuke the GOP once again in 2008 for their tone-deafness on Iraq. But there's more than a partisan chess match at stake here. Our Iraq policy has cost more than 3,000 American lives, anywhere from 60,000 to 150,000 Iraqi lives, a half a trillion dollars, and America's reputation in the world. Chuck Hagel, back in those quaint days when he paid lip service to his opposition to administration policy, referred to Bush's proposed troop surge in Iraq as "the worst foreign policy blunder since Vietnam." He was wrong. The idea to invade Iraq in the first place was the worst foreign policy blunder since General Hannibal "forgot the siege equipment" on his march into Rome. We've paid for it dearly for the past four years and we'll continue paying for it for the foreseeable future. The best of all bad outcomes is that we'll pay for it less severely if we face the music and set a timetable for imminent withdrawal.
There are alot of doomsday scenarios about the cataclysmic consequences of prematurely withdrawing from Iraq, and some of them are pretty persuasive (on the other hand, we finally pulled out of southeast Asia 32 years ago amidst similar doomsday rhetoric, but every country in southeastern Asia today, particularly Vietnam, is at relative political peace and are booming economically). But what I've unconvinced about is that the same horrific consequences won't come to pass even if America stays. They've been happening so far, with the population centers of Iraq turned into a cesspool of sectarian warfare despite an allied troop presence of more than 100,000, and with Islamic militants from throughout the Middle East crossing the desert for their opportunity to advance their jihad and embarrass the United States. Could things really get that much worse if we left?
I don't pretend to know the answer to that, but I do know that things have gotten substantially worse since my previous call to set a timeline for withdrawal 10 months ago. And when the foolish pride of a President and the political party subservient to his "legacy" is too insecure to even allow debate on the Senate floor about the practicality of pressing forward with existing policy, it tells me that the worst possible scenario in the minds of our elected "warmakers" is the political embarrassment over being wrong. So long as that is the case, American foreign policy is in considerably greater peril than if we were to simply withdraw from Iraq tomorrow.
posted by Mark at 5:40 PM
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