Still In Iraq
I can still remember to this day the first e-mail message I sent
out to a group of friends (at work in Utah) outlining my anti-Iraq
War position. I was a voice in the wilderness; virtually no-one
else that I knew (except Dan) was anti-war. That was four years
ago. There were so many baseless justifications for the war that
it was almost hard to keep track... the various and sundry WMD
programs and weapons, the myriad terrorist connections, 9/11
revenge, etc... such was the mania to plunge head long into Iraq.
And I can think of no better way to describe it... it was an
insane policy decision. Yet many level-headed persons that
I know and respect, such as my brother-in-law, were so consumed
with the idea of an Iraq War, that they actually became not only
war supporters... but pro-war cheerleaders. My brother-in-law
actually tuned in to CNN on the night of the invasion to witness
the carnage. It was sickening.
And it still is (sickening), for example read this:
Why are we still in Iraq?
Chuck Hagel: Leaving Iraq, Honorably
I have been catching up on my political reading today somewhat. A
column written by Chuck Hagel a few days ago stood out. I'll pick out a
few choice paragraphs, but I recommend that you
the
whole thing.
Leaving Iraq, Honorably
By Chuck Hagel
Sunday, November 26, 2006; Page B07
There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These
terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The
future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis -- not
the Americans.
Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global
struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and
terrorism. There will be no military victory or military solution for
Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this point last
weekend.
The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more
troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to
Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together
failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in
foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation --
regardless of our noble purpose.
We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable
intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of
Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs
to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and
form of government.
[...]
America finds itself in a dangerous and isolated position in the world.
We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. Unfortunately, that
perception is gaining credibility in the Muslim world and for many years
will complicate America's global credibility, purpose and leadership.
This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed as the world
seeks a new geopolitical, trade and economic center that will
accommodate the interests of billions of people over the next 25 years.
The world will continue to require realistic, clear-headed American
leadership -- not an American divine mission.
The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from
Iraq. The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and
world standing has been devastating. We've already spent more than $300
billion there to prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still
spending $8 billion per month. The United States has spent more than
$500 billion on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our effort in
Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, partly because we took our focus
off the real terrorist threat, which was there, and not in Iraq.
We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build.
We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental
appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and
allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its
policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the
past four years.
It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself
honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton
commission gives the president a new opportunity to form a bipartisan
consensus to get out of Iraq. If the president fails to build a
bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high
price for this blunder -- one that we will have difficulty recovering
from in the years ahead.
To squander this moment would be to squander future possibilities for
the Middle East and the world. That is what is at stake over the next
few months.
The writer is a Republican senator from Nebraska.
I really, really, really wish Chuck Hagel would run for President in
2008. We need a leader that will stand up for old-school conservative
principles and Senator Hagel seems (to me) to be the most competent
person to take that charge.
Staying the Course
George Will has published an excellent column today critical of the
"stay the course" in Iraq policy.
<http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2006/10/22/what_does_staying_the_course_mean>
What does staying the course mean?
By George Will
Sunday, October 22, 2006
A realist with a wintry smile, James A. Baker III, who helped make
George W. Bush's presidency possible, is seeking ways to salvage it.
After the 2000 election, Baker orchestrated the Bush campaign's
lawyering against the Gore campaign's lawyering that tried to overturn
Bush's 537-vote Florida margin. Today Baker is co-chairman -- with
former congressman Lee Hamilton, the Indiana Democrat -- of the Iraq
Study Group, which will issue recommendations after Thanksgiving.
International crises rarely conform tidily to electoral cycles. Too
bad. America's electoral cycles are constitutional facts: Every two
years, elections take the nation's temperature; every four years, the
nation selects the occupant of the office responsible for formulating
foreign policy.
Today the policy of "staying the course" means Americans dying to
prevent Shiites and Sunnis from killing each other. If in January
2009 more than 100,000 U.S. forces remain in Iraq, there might be 100
fewer Republicans in Congress. So "stay the course" is a policy
stamped with an expiration date.
[...]
What are 140,000 U.S. forces achieving in Iraq that could not be
achieved by 40,000? If the answer is "creating Iraqi security
forces," a second question is: Is there an Iraqi government? In
"State of Denial," Bob Woodward quotes Colin Powell, after leaving
the administration, telling the president that strengthening Iraq's
military and police forces is crucial, but that "if you don't have a
government that you can connect these forces to, then, Mr. President,
you're not building up forces, you're building up militias." And
making matters worse.
[...]
In September 1942 the U.S. government purchased 58,575 acres of
wilderness in eastern Tennessee. Soon there was a town, Oak Ridge, and
amazing scientific facilities. Thirty-four months after the purchase,
an atomic blast lit the New Mexico desert. After 43 months in Iraq,
U.S. forces still struggle to cope with improvised explosive devices.
On Sept. 19, Hamilton said "the next three months are critical." On
Oct. 5, Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee,
said that the next "two or three months" are critical. If only the
worsening insurgency were, as the president suggested Wednesday, akin
to North Vietnam's 1968 Tet Offensive. The insurgency is worse: Tet
was a military defeat for North Vietnam. The president says the war in
Iraq will be "just a comma" in history books, but by Nov. 26, the
Sunday after Thanksgiving, with the Study Group's recommendations due,
the comma will have lasted as long as U.S. involvement in World War
II.
The best way to honor the troops is to put pressure on your
representatives to remove the troops from
being unnecessarily put in harm's way (specifically in Iraq).
Bring the troops home now! Vote for candidates that feel the same way.
Vote Libertarian!
A Vain War for Pride (and Profit)
One of my never-to-be-missed destinations for political commentary is
The Belgravia Dispatch,
written by Gregory
Djerejian. Djerejian was pro-Iraq-invasion circa early 2003 but has
since been quite repentant. He writes an excellent piece today about
trying to figure out what the exact motivations were for the Iraq War -
something I've tried very hard to figure out for myself. I like his
conclusion, that is was fought because of the pride and vanity of those
in charge. As they say,
read the
whole thing. Mr. Djerejian does not speak to creating our
unnecessary Iraqi conflict for the benefit of generating profits to
several well-placed Pentagon contractors, but from what I've read about
the no-bid
contracts awarded it seems obvious that this war was not only fought
because of the vanity and pride of our leaders, but it was also
waged purely for profit.
Bizarro Conservatism
I look at my fellow "conservatives", the propaganda they ingest
(via talk radio, periodicals, etc), and just can't help but think
that America can never be redeemed. Justin Raimondo pens an
excellent column today,
Bizarro
Conservatism, that succinctly summarizes my own dour
outlook. If you have the time, I recommend reading it in its
entirety.
The Toll of Neoconservative Foreign Policy
George Will writes a sharp essay today criticizing the agenda of
The Weekly Standard magazine (the most prominent neoconservative
publication in the country). We need more George Will's and less
George Bush's (*sigh*).
Transformation's Toll
By George Will
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
WASHINGTON -- ``Grotesque'' was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's
characterization of the charge that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was
responsible for the current Middle East conflagration. She is correct,
up to a point. This point: Hezbollah and Hamas were alive and toxic long
before March 2003. Still, it is not perverse to wonder whether the
spectacle of America, currently learning a lesson -- one that
conservatives should not have to learn on the job -- about the limits of
power to subdue an unruly world, has emboldened many enemies.
Speaking on ABC's ``This Week," Rice called it ``short-sighted" to judge
the success of the administration's transformational ambitions by a
``snapshot" of progress ``some couple of years" into the transformation.
She seems to consider today's turmoil preferable to the Middle East's
``false stability" of the last 60 years, during which U.S. policy
``turned a blind eye to the absence of democratic forces."
There is, however, a sense in which that argument creates a blind eye:
It makes instability, no matter how pandemic or lethal, necessarily a
sign of progress. Violence is vindication: Hamas and Hezbollah have,
Rice says, ``determined that it is time now to try and arrest the move
toward moderate democratic forces in the Middle East.''
But there also is democratic movement toward extremism. America's
intervention was supposed to democratize Iraq which, by benign
infection, would transform the region. Early on in the Iraq occupation,
Rice argued that democratic institutions do not just spring from a
hospitable political culture, they also can help create such a culture.
Perhaps.
But elections have transformed Hamas into the government of the
Palestinian territories, and elections have turned Hezbollah into a
significant faction in Lebanon's parliament, from which it operates as a
state within the state. And as a possible harbinger of future horrors,
last year's elections gave the Muslim Brotherhood 19 percent of the
seats in Egypt's parliament.
[...]
The administration, justly criticized for its Iraq premises and their
execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from
reality as to defy caricature. The national, ethnic and religious
dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but to The Weekly
Standard -- voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism,
``neoconservativism'' -- everything is crystal clear: Iran is the key to
everything.
``No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of
Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support
for Syria ... '' You get the drift. So, The Weekly Standard says:
``We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a
military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does
anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime
will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather
than later. Yes, there would be repercussions -- and they would be
healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further
appeasement.''
``Why wait?'' Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate,
in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border
Iran. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success,
did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a
war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq. And if
Assad's regime does not fall after The Weekly Standard's hoped-for third
war, with Iran, does the magazine hope for a fourth?
As for the ``healthy'' repercussions that The Weekly Standard is so
eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication's
powers of prophecy, but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's
behalf before all of the surprises -- all of them unpleasant -- that
Iraq has inflicted. And regarding the ``appeasement'' that The Weekly
Standard decries: Does the magazine really wish the administration had
heeded its earlier (Dec. 20, 2004) editorial advocating war with yet
another nation -- the bombing of Syria?
Neoconservatives have much to learn, even from Buddy Bell, manager of
the Kansas City Royals. After his team lost its 10th consecutive game in
April, Bell said, ``I never say it can't get worse.'' In their next
game, the Royals extended their losing streak to 11 and in May lost 13
in a row.
I'm still an active subscriber to the paleoconservative publication,
The American Conservative. I
highly recommend it to thoughtful conservatives everywhere.
Alternatives to Economic Sanctions
Ron Paul (R-TX) published a great article yesterday arguing that we
should be economincally engaged with Iran rather than attempting to
isolate Iran, as this is the best way to indirectly influence the
Irananian people. I highly recommend it for your review:
Sanctions
Against Iran
As the drumbeat for military action against Iran grows louder, some
members of Congress are calling to expand the longstanding U.S. trade
ban that bars American companies from investing in that nation. In fact,
many war hawks in Washington are pushing for a comprehensive
international embargo against Iran. The international response has been
lukewarm, however, because the world needs Iranian oil. But we cannot
underestimate the irrational, almost manic desire of some
neoconservatives to attack Iran one way or another, even if it means
crippling a major source of oil and destabilizing the worldwide economy.
Make no mistake about it: Economic sanctions are acts of aggression.
Sanctions increase poverty and misery among the very poorest inhabitants
of targeted nations, and they breed tremendous resentment against those
imposing them. But they rarely hurt the political and economic elites
responsible for angering American leaders in the first place.
In fact, few government policies are as destructive to our economy as
the embargo.
While embargoes sound like strong, punitive action, in reality they
represent a failed policy that four decades of experience prove doesn't
work. Conversely, economic engagement is perhaps the single most
effective tool in tearing down dictatorships and spreading the message
of liberty.
It is important to note that economic engagement is not the same thing
as foreign aid. Foreign aid, which should be abolished immediately,
involves the US government spending American tax dollars to prop up
other nations.
Embargoes only hurt the innocent of a targeted country. While it may be
difficult for the leader of an embargoed nation to get a box of
American-grown rice, he will get it one way or another. For the poor
peasant in the remote section of his country, however, the food will be
unavailable.
It is difficult to understand how denying access to food, medicine, and
other products benefits anyone. Embargo advocates claim that denying
people access to our products somehow creates opposition to the despised
leader. The reality, though, is that hostilities are more firmly
directed at America.
Father Robert Sirico, a Paulist priest, wrote in the Wall Street Journal
that trade relations "strengthen people's loyalties to each other and
weaken government power." To imagine that we somehow can spread the
message of liberty to an oppressed nation by denying them access to our
people and the bounty of our prosperity is contorted at best.
For more than thirty years we have embargoed Cuba in an attempt to drive
Fidel Castro from power. Yet he remains in power. By contrast look at
the Soviet Union, a nation we allowed our producers to engage
economically. Of course the Soviet Union has collapsed.
Great points.
Narcissism and Paternalism as Foreign Policy
Go read this.
The stage is now set for a still greater and much worse catastrophe: a
military attack on Iran. And there is not one national political leader
of any significance who will oppose it. Most of them will support it,
with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Some of them will say they "regret"
it, but they will view it as a "tragic necessity."
We are in love with death, and every day we bring death closer -- and on
a scale that we dare not even imagine.
If you want security, stop meddling in other people's affairs.
The Failure of the Iraq Experiment
Dan has the goods on the
failed
Iraq experiment and where we should go from here.
(Update Wed Dec 21 09:19:01 PST 2005 // moved to new category)
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