Failure
In his attempt to justify and explain his newly announced Iraq approach, The President falls back on two assertions that he accepts unquestioningly and, which to me, are striking evidence of everything that is wrong with his policy and thought. First is his claim that things were going well in Iraq until the “killers” decided to blow up the Samara Mosque in early 2006. How anyone could look at Iraq in 2003, 2004, and 2005 and conclude that the looting, de-Baathification, lack of services, roadside bombs, and sectarian violence were actually a success, other than in comparison to the increased violence in 2006, is misconstruing reality, almost at the level of seeing WMD and Al Qaeda in Iraq before the start of the war.
More egregious is his second assertion: that he and his critics agree, “failure is not an option.” Once he says this he then justifies his revised approach as the best of any option that he has heard. He also uses this to accuse the Democrats of not having any plan (although in truth they have a few).
The reality is that not only is failure an option, it has already occurred and it can’t be reversed. Last year according to the most recent UN reporting 34,452 Iraqis were killed, which doesn’t include the 60 yesterday at Baghdad University; 1.7 million Iraqi’s have been displaced from their homes; and the brain drain of educated Iraqis leaving the country exceeds 100,000. Nothing about the Unity government appears to strengthen the unification of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites.
Too many people in the area of the world where Muslims and Christians have fought for centuries attribute present-day actions to events of the far distant past. Antagonism in Kosovo referred to battles that took place 600 years ago. The enmity between Shia and Shiites goes back further. On top of that intense bitterness are the events of the past few years where sectarian death squads abound. It doesn’t take much for an Iraqi to be bitterly aggrieved by what has happened recently to family members at the hands of other Iraqis.
There is no doubt that our presence in the country contributes to stopping an all out Civil War, assuming the above statistics don’t represent one already. But when we leave Iraq, whether in six weeks, six months, or six years, the catastrophe will occur. The Iraqis will wait us out as long as it takes. What are a few years compared to hundreds of years of hatred?
So just what does the Bush approach achieve: nothing but the deferral of our departure and the killing and wounding of many more Iraqis and US soldiers. It will not bring peace or stability. It just postpones a decision until the end of his term in office.
If he were capable of looking rationally at Iraq’s condition and our role in it today, anyone who puts himself forward as does Bush as a person of strong and decisive character, would stand up in public and state that he and his advisors miscalculated greatly by invading Iraq, were unable to manage the country we occupied, weakened the United States materially and in the esteem it used to be held throughout the world, and announce that we are now going to cut our losses and leave Iraq to concentrate on our real enemy: fundamentalist terrorism. Bush cannot bring himself to do this and we are burdened with two more years of disaster.
More egregious is his second assertion: that he and his critics agree, “failure is not an option.” Once he says this he then justifies his revised approach as the best of any option that he has heard. He also uses this to accuse the Democrats of not having any plan (although in truth they have a few).
The reality is that not only is failure an option, it has already occurred and it can’t be reversed. Last year according to the most recent UN reporting 34,452 Iraqis were killed, which doesn’t include the 60 yesterday at Baghdad University; 1.7 million Iraqi’s have been displaced from their homes; and the brain drain of educated Iraqis leaving the country exceeds 100,000. Nothing about the Unity government appears to strengthen the unification of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites.
Too many people in the area of the world where Muslims and Christians have fought for centuries attribute present-day actions to events of the far distant past. Antagonism in Kosovo referred to battles that took place 600 years ago. The enmity between Shia and Shiites goes back further. On top of that intense bitterness are the events of the past few years where sectarian death squads abound. It doesn’t take much for an Iraqi to be bitterly aggrieved by what has happened recently to family members at the hands of other Iraqis.
There is no doubt that our presence in the country contributes to stopping an all out Civil War, assuming the above statistics don’t represent one already. But when we leave Iraq, whether in six weeks, six months, or six years, the catastrophe will occur. The Iraqis will wait us out as long as it takes. What are a few years compared to hundreds of years of hatred?
So just what does the Bush approach achieve: nothing but the deferral of our departure and the killing and wounding of many more Iraqis and US soldiers. It will not bring peace or stability. It just postpones a decision until the end of his term in office.
If he were capable of looking rationally at Iraq’s condition and our role in it today, anyone who puts himself forward as does Bush as a person of strong and decisive character, would stand up in public and state that he and his advisors miscalculated greatly by invading Iraq, were unable to manage the country we occupied, weakened the United States materially and in the esteem it used to be held throughout the world, and announce that we are now going to cut our losses and leave Iraq to concentrate on our real enemy: fundamentalist terrorism. Bush cannot bring himself to do this and we are burdened with two more years of disaster.
posted by John Weiss at 4:46 PM
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