How to Destroy Iraq

I'll begin by saying that I don't have a good solution for Iraq, which at least makes me as helpful as the President on the issue. However, the solution offered at the Left Coaster is terrible.

CA Pol Junkie sets it up by triangulating:

Democrats have a problem in proposing policy in Iraq. We can't implement it right now since we have no power, and it has to be attractive enough to get us control of either the House or Senate in 2006. Beyond the political issues, we also need our policy to make sense. Yglesias' approach doesn't work on either level: it passes off the policy buck to the GOP, who have thus far failed miserably, but it gives voters no reason to put us in power, since we are proposing no leadership. Gilliard's policy may turn out to be as good as any other, but the politics are horrible: we would be running in 2006 saying America is a loser.

"Beyond the political issues, we also need our policy to make sense." Sheesh, you think?

How about we consider policies that make sense, and deal with the politics AFTERWARDS? Doesn't that seem like it might put us in a slightly better standing? You know, if maybe Democrats came off as convincingly believing their own foreign policy prescriptions because they actually believe them?

CA Pol Junkie continues:

So what's the answer? Elect us in 2006 and we'll be out of Iraq within two years. Given control of either the Senate or the House, we could force Bush's hand by denying him funds to continue the war. It is that simple.

I have zero confidence that Iraq will be able to stand on its own in two years. This is why I opposed the invasion in the first place, because I believed and continue to believe that we'll be there for a decade or longer, not counting the permanent bases that we'll have. Bush and Rumsfeld have lied so brazenly, so obviously throughout the conflict by denying that we'll leave a permanent footprint that it would be hilarious if it weren't so deadly serious.

Frankly, they're traitors for even suggesting that a nation on which we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars and nearly two thousand American lives as of today wouldn't get a permanent military presence to keep it in line. That's why it's been so laughably sad to hear them dissemble about it. (That means 'not tell the truth'.)

Back to the topic at hand, making a firm policy decision today, or next summer, that US troops will be out of Iraq by 2008 because we'll cut off funding for the war if they're not is lunacy. It continues America's shameful tradition of abandoning nations when we get bored with our earlier work. We did this with Afghanistan in the 1980s, and I think we can all agree that as a long term strategy, abandonment can have some lethal consequences for us.

So here's where we stand: Bush and his noise machine lied constantly prior to the war, promising it would be quick, cheap, and easy. It has been none of those. A lot of hawks on the left were attacked viciously for suggesting that the war would end up looking a lot like it has in fact ended up looking. The American people were sold a bill of goods, and so was our military.

Going in was catastrophically stupid, but the American people are not absolved of our responsibility just because we didn't think this through when we shouted "USA! USA!" at the 2002 midterms.

We're stuck there, and while I'll say again that I think Bush should be tried for treason for any number of issues related to the Iraq war, our only option is to do what he says: Stay the course.

We're going to be there for a long, long time. Bush is a liar and a fool for getting us into this mess, but in a democracy it's the people's burden to bear.

In the end, we may not have a choice but to cut and run. If military recruitment continues to fall short and mid-level officers head for the private sector as they are expected to noticeably do within the next year, our options will be to hold the line in Iraq and leave ourselves effectively defenseless everywhere else or cut our losses in Iraq and hope there's another Colin Powell in the chain of command to develop a coherent doctrine for the use of military force.

Yes kids--say it with me: Quagmire. We're stuck and, as Fester has covered brilliantly, our options are gradually shrinking. The right thing to do, for us, for the world, and certainly for Iraq, is to stay until the job is done, but lacking the manpower to do it and the leadership to recruit additional forces through relationships with our allies, we may not have the chance.

Meanwhile, in The New Republic (plastic/plastic will get you in) Joseph Braude discusses the Zarqawi model of al Qaeda urban insurgency and its spread across the Arab world.

Putting a time limit in place won't solve anything. Winning, really winning, might, but it doesn't seem likely that we have the resources to commit to doing that. In the process of all this, al Qaeda has learned new tactics and tricks.

Yeah, I'm a liberal hawk, but as I said in the beginning, I don't have any good solutions for Iraq. We're going to bleed blood and money for years, or we're going to abandon a nation to the ravages of fundamentalism, terrorism, and civil war.

Let's not make that the policy choice of Democrats. However you feel about the war, the American people gave their consent in November of 2002. We have to be accountable for our choices, and the Democrats would be as wrong to suggest a quick and easy exit as Bush was to suggest a quick and easy war. The real fools are the American people who bought into that idea, but our stupidity doesn't absolve us of the responsibility of Iraq.

Later Update: The Noble Savage has more on this in a post appropriately titled, "A Strategy for Defeat in '06".

Posted by shamanic at June 3, 2005 08:56 PM | TrackBack