Boston Globe Opinion, By James Carroll, 9/2/2003
THE WAR IS LOST.
| Oh, woe! I shall pause here to rend my garments... |
By most measures of what the Bush administration forecast for its adventure in Iraq, it is already a failure. The war was going to make the Middle East a more peaceful place.
It was going to undercut terrorism.
| It did that when Sammy bumped off Abu Nidal. It did that when we shut down the PLA. It did that when we shut down MKO. It did that when we beat up Ansar al-Islam. It did that when we got all the intel leads that we're presumably following. It continues to do that with the swarm of Bad Guys coming into the country for our guys to shoot... |
It was going to show the evil dictators of the world that American power is not to be resisted.
| It's not. They can all face the vision of being bumped off, stuffed and mounted in the aftermath of a 3-week campaign in which we lose very few men and they lose everything... |
It was going to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis.
| It's improved the lives of those who haven't been tossed into mass graves... |
It was going to stabilize oil markets. The American army was going to be greeted with flowers. None of that happened.
| Some of it happened. Some's still happening... |
The most radical elements of various fascist movements in the Arab world have been energized by the invasion of Iraq.
| Rock: if they look soft, their people will kill them. Hard place: if they continue with their tough-guy ways, we'll kill them... |
The American occupation is a rallying point for terrorists. Instead of undermining extremism, Washington has sponsored its next phase, and now moderates in every Arab society are more on the defensive than ever.
| Didn't we realize we were going to move to a new phase? I think most of us did. If the Bad Guys lose Iraq, we'll have an island of stability — and eventual prosperity — in the middle of a sea of despotism and self-imposed poverty. We all knew they couldn't afford to let us keep it, just like we can't afford to let them take it away from us... |
Before the war, the threat of America's overwhelming military dominance could intimidate, but now such force has been shown to be extremely limited in what it can actually accomplish.
| Just ask Uday and Qusay. Oh, not talking, eh? Ask, ummm... 44 of the 55 members of the playing cards club... |
For the sake of "regime change," the United States brought a sledge hammer down on Iraq, only to profess surprise that, even as Saddam Hussein remains at large, the structures of the nation's civil society are in ruins.
| As they were before we brought the sledge hammer down on them. They had 34 years of inefficient dictatorship, pissing away the national wealth on palaces, guns, bombs, and military adventures while the infrastructure decayed around them... |
The humanitarian agencies necessary to the rebuilding of those structures are fleeing Iraq.
| Some are. Some aren't. Some are temporarily but will be back, once things have settled... |
The question for Americans is, Now what?
| I'd say kill Sammy, wipe out as many Qaeda and allied thugs and we can find, keep the Iranians from trying to gnaw off part of the country, and build the government that'll run things when we're gone. What's your opinion? |
Democrats and Republicans alike want to send in more US soldiers. Some voices are raised in the hope that the occupation can be more fully "internationalized," which remains unlikely while Washington retains absolute control. But those who would rush belligerent reinforcements to Iraq are making the age-old mistake.
| Ah, yes! The age-old mistake of using military force to meet a military threat! Why didn't we see that? (Ow! Hurt my forehead...) |
When brutal force generates resistance, the first impulse is to increase force levels. But, as the history of conflicts like this shows, that will result only in increased resistance.
| Whereas cutting out troops, even withdrawing all of them will result in... uhhhh... increased resistance, followed by a take-over by the kind of guys we threw out in the first place. Brilliant. Why didn't I realize that? |
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has rejected the option of more troops for now, but, in the name of force-protection, the pressures for escalation will build as US casualties mount. The present heartbreak of one or two GI deaths a day will seem benign when suicide bombers, mortar shells, or even heavier missile fire find their ways into barracks and mess halls.
| Which it probably eventually will, a few times. On the other hand, the moderate casualties we're taking — we're not talking about Kursk or Normandy or the invasion of Okinawa here — will seem worth it when Iraq's a peaceful and prosperous country (or more likely three countries) under a democratically elected government (or governments)... |
Either reinforcements will be sent to the occupation, or present forces will loosen the restraints with which they reply to provocation. Both responses will generate more bloodshed and only postpone the day when the United States must face the truth of its situation.
| And pray tell, whose blood will be shed as we're being forced to face the truth of our situation? If it's our blood being shed and none of the Bad Guys, we're in trouble. If we're shedding blood in the pursuit of wiping out the Bad Guys, then we're paying a price to achieve our objectives. We do have eventual objectives, y'know... |
The Bush administration's hubristic foreign policy has been efficiently exposed as based on nothing more than hallucination.
| Now we're down to the meat... |
High-tech weaponry can kill unwilling human beings, but it cannot force them to embrace an unwanted idea.
| Nope. You need to persuade them. But first you've got to get their attention, don't you? |
As rekindled North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs prove, Washington's rhetoric of "evil" is as self-defeating as it is self-delusional.
| Where's the delusion in the assumption both states are evil? One of the two is the most evil state on the face of the earth. The other's middlin' evil with its own people, but they've been purveyors of fine terrorism since 1979... |
No one could have predicted a year ago that the fall from the Bush high horse of American Empire would come so hard and so quickly. Where are the comparisons with Rome now? The rise and fall of imperial Washington took not hundreds of years, but a few hundred days.
| I must have missed the thump. Need some Imperial Rome analogies? When the Goths showed up, the Romans, fat and happy and prosperous, tried to accomodate them with land and dialogue. Next thing you knew, Aetius was winning Rome's last battle in Gaul, Honorius had him assassinated, Attila fell in love with Galla Placida, and then the whole shebang collapsed. |
Sooner or later, the United States must admit that it has made a terrible mistake in Iraq, and it must move quickly to undo it.
| "Sammy! Sammy! Come out, come out, wherever you are! All is forgiven!" |
That means the United States must yield not only command of the occupation force, but participation in it. The United States must renounce any claim to power or even influence over Iraq, including Iraqi oil. The United States must accept the humiliation that would surely accompany its being replaced in Iraq by the very nations it denigrated in the build-up to the war.
| Yes! Yes! Humiliate us! Make us lick the Arab toes! Oh! It hurts so good! |
With the United States thus removed from the Iraqi crucible, those who have rallied to oppose the great Satan will loose their raison d'etre, and the Iraqi people themselves can take responsibility for rebuilding their wrecked nation.
| Just as soon as those who have rallied to oppose the Great Satan take over the reins of power, execute everyone who doesn't agree with them, and then impose some sort of "Arab prosperity" like Syria has or like Muammar's imposed on Libya for all these years... |
All of this might seem terribly unlikely today, but something like it is inevitable.
| We're doomed! Oh, woe! (Damn! My garmen't already rent...) |
The only question is whether it happens over the short term, as the result of responsible decision-making by politicians in Washington, or over the long term, as the result of a bloody and unending horror.
| I'll go with the bloody and unending horror. You never know. We might pull something out... |
The so-called "lessons" of Vietnam are often invoked by hawks and doves alike, but here is one that applies across the political spectrum. The American people saw that that war was lost in January 1968, even as the Tet Offensive was heralded as a victory by the Pentagon and the White House. But for five more years, Washington refused to face the truth of its situation, until at last it had no choice.
| Meanwhile, a wise and Democrat Congress kept cutting funds until the poor South Vietnamese ended up trying to fight off North Vietnamese tanks with shovels... |
Because American leaders could not admit the nation's mistake, and move to undo it, hundreds of thousands of people died, or was it millions?
| I dunno. Hundreds of thousands, I think... |
The war in Iraq is lost. What will it take to face that truth this time? |