Hi XBrit; Interesting article. Re: "The first approach may well be favoured by many in the anti-war camp. Withdraw now, and recognise the war was a mistake. This is what many Iraqis fear we may do. This of course is unrealistic. For Bush and Blair it would be political suicide, their humiliation almost absolute. It would also be a terrible national humiliation, far beyond our leaders, with all the implications for future foreign and trade relations around the world. NO, the problem is that having started this war we must now finish it and win it. So is the present approach the best way to go?"
This is a fairly common sentiment. Humans just don't like to admit it when they are wrong, and sometimes this ends up costing them far more than it needs to. The best way of getting by is to cut your losses before you run them into big digits. Yes our losses are already very high (damage to UN, NATO, world opinion, etc.), but our losses continue to mount (our appearing to be a paper tiger, our killing of innocent civilians for traffic infractions that should result in fines, etc.) and our leaders refuse to even guess when the war will be over. For these reasons, I'd like to make some points concerning this idea, that we can't get out of Iraq because of the national "humiliation".
First of all, the underlying assumption here is that Iraq is "winnable" as a war. Unfortunately, history suggests that our experience there will be no better than that of the Israelis in Lebanon or Palestine, and because of the size of Iraq and her very long and permeable borders, it is likely to be considerably worse.
Second, the objective of liberating a people that do not, on the whole, wish to be liberated, (at least by us), smells like a rather weak justification for killing. If the Iraqis are so stupid as to be unable to recognize our good intentions, then we should leave them, like the Vietnamese before them, to suffer as slaves to the regime that they apparently prefer. There is no reason for our soldiers to die in a hopeless attempt to free a slave that wants only to stick a knife in our back.
Third, the concept that it would be "humiliating" to admit our mistake in Iraq is a travesty of everything that is best about the Christian religion that our leader espouses. The whole concept of Christianity is humility, not pride. The world already thinks the absolute worst of us; this is apparent from any number of polls. Our admitting our mistake in Iraq before we many thousands of our soldiers have sacrificed their lives in a vanity equivalent to the Vietnam conflict would make the world appreciate us as wise and capable of learning. As it is, those parts of the world that love us (and tried very hard to save us from this disaster) are horrified at what we have done and "winning" a peace that makes Iraq look like the Gaza Strip is not going to change their minds. In fact, we'll be lucky if they don't begin running sanctions against us for being so inhuman as to destroy Iraq in order to "free" it. And those parts of the world see that we will likely be caught in the Iraq swamp for years if not decades, and they see this as an opportunity to obtain their revenge against us.
Fourth, it should now be evident to all that our war on terrorism is in severe danger of tumbling completely out of control. As our unjust actions in Iraq anger the Moslem countries, their citizens become more radical, more supportive of terrorists against us, and we can be certain of seeing the regimes that now barely control them lurch towards Islamic Fundamentalism.
Finally, those who concern themselves excessively with "humiliation" should consider what effect our behavior has on the feelings of others. Iraqis are forced to publicly strip before being allowed near our soldiers. The anger of the Iraqi civilians as well as the whole Arab and Moslem world is growing daily. Is it really our objective to crush the necks of the Arabs until they admit complete and total defeat, in order to avoid humiliating ourselves? What kind of logic is this? This sounds like fascist rhetoric.
We are in deep trouble. For Bush and Blair to continue to put out press releases denying what is obvious to the whole world only makes our leaders look, at best, like fools and hypocrites. Their repeated announcements of various objectives having been achieved soon followed by retractions has left much of the world relying on Al-Jazeera for truthful reporting. Can we afford to continue to paint ourselves into the Iraq corner? It's been a disaster so far, and it doesn't look like it's getting any better.
It's time to admit that "mistakes were made", and to ask neutral parties to begin negotiations for a cease fire.
Yes, this will mean the end of the political careers of Bush and Blair, but the fate of our countries is not the same as the fate of our leaders. We've already had many leaders that are listed in the history books as fools and petty criminals. Bush and Blair are already lost causes as far as the future's history books go. We need to dump them and worry about what matters; our countries.
-- Carl |
