Extricating Ourselves From Iraq Must Be A Bipartisan Decision
For those of us among the 30% of Americans, mostly liberals and left-of-centre moderates with a sprinkling of libertarian conservatives, who opposed the invasion of Iraq from the beginning, it is particularly difficult now not to demand the immediate withdrawal of our forces from that sad and chaotic country. Our scepticism was never prompted by knee-jerk opposition to any and all use of military force that the more vociferous Bush supporters on the right condemned in their caricatures of our position; rather, it was based simply on the illogic of the whole enterprise.
To name but a few: Saddam Hussein had committed many evil acts in his life but he was not a threat to the United States whether he had weapons of mass destruction or not; he was no ally of the Islamist fundamentalist terrorists who had attacked us on September 11th 2001, ruling as he did a secular state, and was unlikely to become one given that al-Qaida would have been happy to remove him themselves; overthrowing the established order of a state with so many ethnic, tribal and religious divisions promised to unleash forces we would be unable to control; and even if that did not occur, it was likely that pure old fashioned nationalism would provoke resistance to an occupation of a Muslim nation by a Christian army; and last but not least, it would be difficult for democracy to flourish with so may competing forces in a country with no democratic traditions.
None of this seemed like rocket science either to me, my wife, or just about any of my friends and acquaintances. Yet 70% of Americans, much of the mainstream media, including such worthies as the Washington Post, and the majority in the Congress of the United States bought into the nonsense peddled by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al and supported what we now can see clearly has proved to be the greatest strategic blunder ever perpetrated by a US administration. The waste in terms of lives lost or ruined and treasure spent is almost beyond measure.
Yet we should be wary of pushing the Democrats in the Congress, as many are doing, to cut off funding for the troops in Iraq, whether as a means to rein in the latest surge in troops or as part of a strategy to compel a withdrawal based on a particular timetable. For one thing cutting off funding is a somewhat blunt instrument that could have unintended and undesirable consequences; for another, it will simply give ammunition to the Republicans and right-wing pundits to trumpet the notion that the Democratic Party cannot be trusted with our national security. It has always been a bum-rap but it has stuck since the Vietnam War. And last, whilst it is true that we went into this war without an honest and adequate debate, and without the sort of consensus that we enjoyed, say, for striking at al-Qaida in Afghanistan, that is not a justification for replicating the mistake in order to extricate ourselves.
Should political consequences weigh in such a decision? Yes, of course they should. The Bush administration has done incalculable damage to our country, our democracy, our environment, our international reputation and prestige, and our overall well-being, in a way that goes well beyond the Iraq imbroglio. The climb back up out of the deep and dark hole into which we have fallen will be long, steep and hard and will not begin until a new administration takes over in January 2009. For all of our sakes that must be a Democratic administration. If Democrats are perceived to have hamstrung the counter-insurgency strategy belatedly being followed by the US forces in Iraq under General David Petraeus, they could yet blow the 2008 race no matter who their nominee. And if Democrats don’t control the White House, they will have no chance to repair the damage done by Bush or to set us on a more responsible course, even if they retain a hold on the majority in Congress.
There is also the slim possibility that Petraeus really will be able to make enough of a difference in tamping down the sectarian strife sufficiently for Iraqi politicians, assuming they have the will or the inclination, to set aside the winner-take-all attitude that to this point has permeated Iraqi politics, and work towards a genuine national reconciliation. Do I believe it will happen? No I can’t say that I do (see ‘The Surge – Last Charge of the Neocons’ posted on this site December 26th). Petraeus is undoubtedly the right man for the job and he has surrounded himself with able people; his plan makes perfect sense. It might well have worked in 2003 before the Shiite militias had formed, before the Sunni insurgents had coalesced to become the formidable force they are; before people had lost all faith in the ability of the occupying forces to keep them safe; before so many in the Iraqi middle classes had fled for their lives. Now I just think it’s too little too late. I have every faith in the ability of our soldiers and marines to do whatever is asked of them; I have little faith that Iraq’s politicians will do their part – and without that no military strategy can succeed.
The fact remains, however, that we must answer the question posed repeatedly by supporters of the surge: what would you do instead? And if the alternative is an orderly but certain withdrawal over a one to two year span, how would you manage the possible, even probable, consequences which could entail the complete unravelling of Iraq and the spread of the violence regionally? I don’t necessarily buy into this doom’s day scenario. I still support a timetable for withdrawal (indeed, one could argue that the willingness of Prime Minister Maliki to support the new strategy has been prompted largely by the pressure he sees being asserted in the US Congress) but I also believe we need to have a substantive debate on how we would manage a disengagement of our troops from a situation that even the term “civil war” doesn’t adequately describe. Pressing now to de-fund part or all of our military effort in Iraq would simply play into the hands of the neo-cons and this administration, who would inevitably portray Democrats as having cut the rug out from under our last opportunity for success in Iraq.
For the time being, I think the bipartisan non-binding resolution in the US Senate opposing the escalation of the war is a reasonable first step to take. I hope it passes, although even that may not be possible as Republicans rally, albeit reluctantly in many cases, to the president. No matter the scorn from the right (and some on the left), the resolution is a way for Congress to register its opposition to Bush’s war and to the incompetent way it has been managed. It says, effectively, that we have little or no faith in him to get it right even at this late stage. It is about Bush’s competence not that of General Petraeus. No matter how much it makes us grind our teeth as we get ever deeper into the morass in Iraq, I believe it is the most we should do at this point.
There may come a time when the country has had enough and will want out of Iraq, no matter what we leave behind. That time has not yet come, and it would be a mistake to misread the 2006 election results as a clear indication that it has. Appalled as they are by the way things have gone in Iraq, most Americans would still like to salvage something from the mess we’ve created. In any case, it was never in the cards that American forces would begin to withdraw in substantial numbers before Bush left office – not with his entire legacy hanging in the balance.
This over-his-head president, his ideologically blinkered vice-president and their incompetent yes-men advisors initiated a chain of events in Iraq which have led us to this point, in which we confront utter failure. And now they plead with us to bleed more American lives and treasure for years to come in what will likely be a vain effort to stop the consequences of their actions from being a worse disaster than they have been to date. It’s a hard thing to swallow, no question about it.
Nevertheless, when we finally leave Iraq it needs to be as part of a bipartisan consensus in which we have fully considered and planned for the possible consequences before finally pulling the plug.
