Just like the nation as a whole, most states have a geographical distribution of political persuasions. Almost like "birds of a feather", the liberals congregate in one district and the conservatives in another. San Diego with it's large military contingent, has never been considered the most liberal area of California. All the more interesting to see this in a San Diego paper.
"Declare victory in Iraq and leave "
Americans believe their wars are "good" wars, not like other people's wars. America goes to war for noble causes, certainly not for glory, booty and conquest. That's for others.
This skewed view grows out of the world wars, the noblest of wars. Look further, however, and history tells a different story. Most of our wars, from the Indian to the Iraqi, have been fought for glory, booty and conquest.
Just like everybody else.
The mythology of American altruism dies hard. Because we are a democracy; because we have had no caesars, kaisers, czars or emperors seeking deification, we assume our purity of motive. We laugh at the Emperor Claudius, made a "god" by his Senate. We ridicule the emperor Napoleon in his ermine robe, declaring himself the new Charlemagne. Kaiser Willy and the Czar Nicky, World War I cousins who plunged Europe into its 30-year nightmare, repel us.
America was to be the antidote to Europe's decadence, to its wars and empires. After World War II, our finest hour, we were generous to the victors, magnanimous to the defeated. Beginning in 1945, we helped write a world code of conduct. Imperfect, it went beyond anything tried before.
Beyond the world wars, our story is not so good. When we have deviated from post-1945 principles, things have gone badly. We tried to save Vietnam from the Communists and ended up dropping 7 million tons of bombs on it. Better dead than red.
In Vietnam, the myth of the noble cause was laid to rest. But we claimed we learned from it.
Now comes Iraq.
As with Vietnam, another president calls it a noble war, says we go as liberators, not conquerors. Self-interest is not a consideration. We won't stay in Iraq "one day longer than necessary," he says, a statement intended for doubting Thomases.
But necessary to do what? To colonize, puppetize, balkanize, Christianize, democratize Iraq? Long enough to get back our eventual war investment of maybe $500 billion? How many barrels of Iraqi oil over how many years make $500 billion?
Condoleezza Rice is more precise. Our commitment to Iraq, she says, will be for a"generation."
How can any administration, elected for a single term, commit a nation for a generation to anything?
We have no choice, we are told. We must pay $87 billion for Iraq now, bringing the total so far to $166 billion, with more to come. All but $19 billion of that is for conquest and occupation, not reconstruction. The World Bank says Iraq will need $55 billion in reconstruction costs over the next four years. Where will it come from?
The fact is we do have a choice.
We can declare victory and come home, exactly as we should have done in Vietnam before it was too late. The longer we stay in Iraq the worse things will get – for us and for Iraqis. The idea of staying for a generation is anti-American and, based on the Vietnam experience, ahistorical.
The Bush view is that to leave now would lead to chaos and catastrophe. Civil war, fanaticism, terrorism, these things, the products of despair, would erase the fruits of our victory, we are told. We must stay until Iraq is pacified, democratized and Americanized.
No longer than necessary.
As long as it takes.
This view is wrong-headed. Bush's course of action will weigh on our security, reputation, consciences and pocketbook for years. A generational U.S. occupation in Iraq would receive no support from our friends, would split our alliances and foster terrorism against America and Americans.
U.S. troops, now dying at about five per week, would continue to die indefinitely. As in Vietnam, the public clamor to pull out would increase, emboldening Iraqi nationalists to make more attacks, making it harder to pull out, as in Vietnam, under the gun.
Now is the optimum time to begin the negotiations that enable us to leave. Bush can announce that he has achieved his goal: the overthrow of his nemesis, Saddam Hussein. A U.N. resolution giving interim political control in Iraq to the United Nations with a mandate to move expeditiously to early elections will generate allied help and support where it is now absent.
The Bush administration defies history. It says that only a long occupation can prevent chaos, when history teaches that long occupations spawn the seeds of resentment and hostility in local populations that eventually explode into catastrophe.
There is only one explanation why Bush doesn't take the rational course of action in Iraq before it is too late. It is not the fear of chaos. Chaos exists.
Bush wants to stay in Iraq for the same reason the British wanted to stay 80 years ago: profit.
I don't believe Bush took us to war for oil. He had other bad reasons, and we don't need oil as badly as the British navy needed it in 1920.
But since we're there anyway, why not make a little return on investment?
Stories appear daily of companies and individuals with ties to Bush who are moving in on Iraq. Halliburton, Bechtel, Richard Perle, Joe Allbaugh, Edward M. Rogers, Lanny Griffith, the firm of Kellogg, Brown and Root.
They'll all do well. A lot better than either America or Iraq.
from
signonsandiego.com
JMO
lurqer |
