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   Iraq

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(the Iraq war is going to be) "a really messy, bloody, stupid situation that we never should have gotten into in the first place" -email, 3/15/03

"Our brave troops have completed their original mission, and won the war." -Paul Corden


Let us be clear- the attack on Iraq was a prima facie act of aggressive war, and those responsible should be indicted and tried for it per the Nuremberg standard. That they were American absolves them of nothing, it simply makes them our responsibility. And we cannot very well hold our own government to a lower standard than we held the Nazis. I don't think this is an extreme opinion. It wasn't considered extreme for the Germans or the Japanese or Slobodan Milosevic, though granted that holding your own leadership responsible for a war has never been done before. But then again neither had the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution or walking on the Moon. We're that kind of country. And leadership isn't just a word you stick at the top of your website.

The war in Iraq has been a spectacular failure even by government standards. Here's the rest of the above quoted email I wrote beforehand about what was going to happen.

By way of a disclaimer- how did I know before it started that the Iraq war was "unjustified" and would degenerate into a "really messy, bloody, stupid situation that we never should have gotten into in the first place"? Because I had read a bit of history, I've travelled in the Middle East, and I have a lick of sense.

What should we do now? We should leave. We attacked them under false pretenses, we have killed between one and two hundred thousand of their people (correction: 655,000), we have devastated their country, quite possibly ended it in fact, we have tortured and humiliated them, and we did it all for nothing. Now they would like us to leave. What part of this do people not understand?

There is essentially no chance an American backed Iraqi government will survive on its own. Before we leave we should have one final election, as best we can, held under the clear stipulation that the government being elected is that of Iraq and Iraq alone. After that, we should extend what humanitarian assistance we can to the Iraqis for the long climb ahead of them, we should get in our humvees, and we should leave. Period.

Regardless of what one thinks about the morality of war, regardless of which political party they subscribe to, it should by now be clear that neither the President nor either house of Congress had the slightest idea of what they were leaping into in Iraq. That they should be so oblivious to a thing so obvious ought to trouble us all. Clearly, the single best way to deal with the Iraq war is to completely change the leadership that got us into it.

As I wrote in a letter to the Greenville News, "War is not policy or diplomacy or a rowdy frat party, it is massive, mechanized brutality, awkward legitimized atrocity, and to engage in it on a basis of deceit, for reasons other than immediate self defense, is an abominable crime. We put the Nazi hierarchy to death for it." The current debacle in Iraq is not World War I or World War II or some vast noble effort to spread peace and enlightenment or even a "war on terror". It's just another stupid, squalid little war that didn't have to be, waged for Israel and oil and war profits insofar as it is being waged for anything, and all the thousands killed in it so far, the women, the children, the soldiers, didn't have to die. It is arguably the dumbest war this country has ever gotten into, and that's saying something. Further, when it comes to "defending freedom" I would point out, and I challenge anyone to find the flaw in this, but the fact is that it's not the US military but the Iraqi and Afghani resistance that are closest to actually defending American freedom, whether we or they know it or not, because as bad as Bush has been so far in his assault on the Constitution there's no telling how much power he would have grabbed by now if his two wars hadn't flopped. And that's the dark, simple truth.

We have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq, people who had never done anything to us and were not about to, killed them it is claimed because of weapons which did not exist, terrorist ties they never had, killed them because we care about them so much, though we do not bother to count their bodies. And we continue to kill them still. It is some distance to madness. Those responsible continue to insist they thought it was justified. You can either think them liars or fools. I am willing to believe both.

Gone are the days of "shock and awe", democracy building, the partnership of big strong America and happy little Iraq marching together into the broad sunlit uplands of Middle East westernism. Now, the remaining rationale for prolonging the war is that a pullout would leave Iraq an even bigger mess than we've made it so far. But this rational is founded upon the false hope that the same people who needlessly turned Iraq into what it now is will somehow manage to put it right. It will not happen. In order to recover, the Iraqis need their own country, and they cannot have this under American military occupation. It thus should end. Regrettably, this appears too fine a point for many politicians to grasp.

It's become something of a national pastime to speculate about why we attacked Iraq. War is of course its own justification for weapon companies, and oil companies have certainly made a great deal of money from the turmoil, but as I wrote beforehand the closest thing to a strategic reason for the war is Israeli security. It's a neocon war, they're Zionists, it's about Israel. The head of the 9/11 commission succinctly summarized the matter before the war. Jim Lobe analyzes the question further in Why Did the US Invade Iraq?. And here's an interesting analysis of how the neocon architects of the war came to be in power.

I've said from the beginning the war was "unjustified and stupid", I wrote beforehand that 150,000 soldiers were "plainly not in the ballpark of being enough", that Bush's plan to stomp democracy into the Middle East was "like something from Saturday Night Live". I wrote that Bush's claims about WMDs were false and his claims about fighting terrorism nonsensical. I wrote some hours before the invasion that "Iraqi women and children are about to die in much greater numbers than the US military, and they are going to die without a clear reason .... And yet, and yet many Americans will still manage righteous, perhaps even mystified indignation at the blowback. Go figure." Unfortunately, as obvious as these things were to some people, they weren't obvious to others, particularly those responsible.

As I've said all along, American soldiers will continue to die as long as they are in Iraq, and when enough of them die we will bring the rest home. The Iraqi's desire to rid their country of a foreign occupier will outlast our desire to stay. And when American soldiers leave, whatever government they are propping up will collapse. Until this happens, and perhaps for some time afterwards, Iraq will be a battleground. Anything beyond this is academic over analysis.

Congressman Inglis is strikingly flexible in his position on the war, ranging from it being "a long shot", to "As quickly as possible, we should find a way to declare victory and get out", to "We in Congress need to support the American forces in every conceivable way, giving them the tools to convert, capture or kill terrorists and the time to equip the Iraqi security forces". My favorite is his rather loose definition of "reasonable stability", which involves "more car bombings and more suicide bombers than we would find acceptable". Funny, but I've never equated car bombings and suicide bombers with either reasonableness or stability, but perhaps I simply lack the congressman's imagination. I would however observe that for someone to put their own political fortunes ahead of the lives entrusted them is, as my grandmother would say, lower than gully dirt.

My advice to Congressman Inglis back in February of 2005:

"OK here's my advice on Iraq. I guess I offer it mostly to quote in a future letter.

1.    Announce the intention to completely withdraw US forces from Iraq. This will eventually happen anyway, and the sooner it is officially accepted and announced the fewer lives will be lost.

2.    Face the fact that you are in salvage mode. The best government you can reasonably hope to have in Iraq is a stable authoritarian power structure that isn't too theocratic, doesn't hate America for too many generations, and will someday in the sweet by and by evolve into a genuine democracy. Accept this reality and work toward it.

3.    The President has apparently decided, perhaps as a matter of political reality, perhaps based on Revelations, or for all I know both, that 150,000 soldiers are going to be enough in Iraq. Without endorsing the idea that the situation is recoverable, 150,000 soldiers are plainly only enough to maintain the blood shower. Fewer will be less.

4.    Balkanization of Iraq probably isn't in anyone's long term interests."