LB,
You recently had a running debate with Karen on what to do now, I was tempted to get in, but didn't have the time. You said, (I think--correct me if I am misstating) what difference does it make if the invasion was justified or not now, we are there, we can't just leave, recriminations are counterproductive, what do we do now? But what if the problem is, we have maneuvered ourselves into an unwinnable situation? What if all the options on the table are bad ones? I know it goes against the American grain to think and, especially, to say this, but it has happened before (he said dryly). "Peace with honor" may have resonanted with a positive glow for some people back in '73-'75, but the truth is, it wasn't peace with honor, it was getting out at last with tail between our legs, let the civil war between the French-supported Vietnamese and the Vietnamese nationalists finally begin and end. What this invasion has done, IMHO, is make civil war in Iraq inevitable. Maybe not real soon, not, say, in the next year or two. But in the next 5-10 years. Saddam has too many well-armed and well-financed supporters who have pissed off and humiliated over the years too many people who are also well armed and well financed for this not to be so. Even if Saddam himself is captured/killed, that basic situation won't change. Too many people have too much to lose (like their lives, their property, their "honor") for them NOT to fight each other. Sure, the US presence will put a damper on it. But as more people lose their lives--not just or even primarily Americans, but Iraqis both innocent and not so innocent--more and more people will get fed up with the US presence. Let us at them, they are already saying--see the recent report about Iraqi calls for a paramilitary group to fight against the ghosts who are perpetrating violence, and Bremer's mistrust of such groups--a mistrust that is valid, IMO, but so too are the Iraqi points in favor. We need to do something, we can do it better than you. As the killings mount, so will the calls, and if they are unheeded and rejected, it won't matter that Bremer's reservations are well founded. Private militias will form, people generally are too well armed in Iraq.
Listening to Wolfowitz can make you optimistic. But these guys are out of touch with Iraqi society--they make the weaker argument stronger by glossing over the realities of Iraqi culture and history. They like to think, academic-style, that all people want the same things out of life (read the Sept 2002 White Paper they wrote justifying pre-emption), that everyone is basically the same. Well, the problem is, while there is some truth to that, there is also a great deal of simplification to that.
Summary--no matter what we do at this point, very bad things will result. And it is, to be blunt about it, the fault of the Bush admin for (a) overestimating the power of sheer military force when the political reality doesn't allow you to adopt scorched earth tactics, (b) for underestimating the depth of Saddam's supporters in Iraq (not to say that they are necessarily loyal to him personally, but they know that if the Shias and Kurds gain power, they will be dead meat), (c) for their diplomatic tin ear, (d) for putting the '02 elections above all else, and manufacturing this crisis in order to do well in it (not to say that they manufactured the terrorist crisis in general; it is to say that they manufactured specifically the Iraqi crisis; they have bungled the war against Al Qaeda too, but that is another story), and (e) well, I had an e but I forget it offhand, and must go for now, perhaps later.
Meanwhile, below is Robert Scheer's column calling for the US to get.
How Many Body Bags?
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By Robert Scheer
Columnist
LA Times
Tuesday 04 November 2003
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Bush must reverse his misguided policy and get out of Iraq now
On Sunday, 19 more young Americans died in Iraq serving the vanity of an American president who woefully betrayed them and who has no idea where his policies are taking the country.
This is a president who, as is now amply clear, has systematically lied to the troops and the nation about the reasons for going to war, distorting evidence to claim that the United States was threatened by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and linking Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Having led the country by the nose into a clumsy, ill-advised Middle East power grab, President Bush is faced with a terrible quandary: What do we do now?
The first thing is to resist the logic of the self-fulfilling prophecy: Bush claimed Iraq was a center of international terrorism — it wasn't — and now says that because terrorists are coming over Iraqi borders to take potshots at Americans, we need to stay and fight them.
"We won't run," Bush said, cavalierly dismissing the lives of the young soldiers mired in his folly. This amounts to using our young men and women as bait and assumes there are a finite number of fanatics who can be dispensed with once and for all.
In fact, the U.S. occupation of the historic center of the Arab world has provided Al Qaeda and other like-minded groups with their most effective recruiting poster yet, and we are fighting them on their terms and on their turf.
Meanwhile, attacks also are coming from various Iraqi quarters: those who enjoyed favors under Hussein and those who may have been glad to see the U.S. overthrow the tyrant but have since become alienated by an occupation that inevitably inspires nationalist as well as religious opposition.
Why can't we learn from our history in Vietnam and the experiences of the French in Algeria and the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza that no occupation by an army of "the other" is ever welcome?
Only last week, Israel's army chief of staff issued a warning on the limits of an occupying power to achieve its goals through the exercise of military force. "It increases hatred for Israel and strengthens the terror organizations," Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon told Israeli reporters, adding: "In our tactical interests, we are operating contrary to our strategic interests."
Some pundits and politicians, even those who may have been skeptical about the war to begin with, now argue that we must "finish the job," even if it means increasing our commitment of troops or ruling Iraq indefinitely. This is, however, exactly the kind of stubborn and mushy thinking that led us into the hell of the Vietnam War and the deaths of 58,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese and Cambodians.
The occupation of Iraq is not working and will not work. For Iraqis, our culture is offensive and our tactics heavy-handed. As none other than the American-sponsored Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi put it after the latest guerrilla attacks: "The Americans, their methods, their operations and their procedures are singularly unsuited to deal with this kind of problem."
And U.S. intentions in Iraq are far from clear. Though there may be an echo of "white man's burden" that seeks to export "civilization," even that highly questionable goal is clouded and undermined by the fact that Washington inevitably will put a higher priority on having a new Iraq serve the U.S.' superpower needs — oil, commerce, military power — rather than meet the needs of regular Iraqis.
Unless we are willing to trade the lives of U.S. troops and Iraqis for the obsessions of empire, we must end the occupation now.
The U.S. can give Chalabi and his crowd the money they need to operate in the short run and similarly aid the more established Shiite groups. It can beg the United Nations Security Council to take over this mess, with financial support from the U.S., and smooth the transfer of power enough to let the president save face by declaring the mission a victory.
Such a wise reversal of course might even help Bush get reelected — his poll numbers on Iraq are sinking. If he can back off from the edge of the cliff to which his hyper-aggressive foreign policy has taken us, the public might be conned into giving him another term. Personally, I think the president should be impeached for his lies. But more important, he should redeem himself by coming to his senses and ending the carnage and instability he has wrought in Iraq and the world.
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