We Americans hear lots of talk about “winning the war” in Iraq and even more about “ending the war”, as if those were our choices. The fact is that we won the war soon after we invaded, when Saddam Hussein’s government collapsed and organized opposition ceased. However, because of the Bush Administration’s failure to plan adequately for the pacification and unification of the country, and the failure to utilize sufficient force to accomplish that objective, we have found ourselves in a deadly and costly morass for nearly five years, longer than it took to defeat and pacify both Germany and Japan in World War II.
So what do we do now? Let’s not talk about “winning” because we have no clearly defined foe in Iraq at this time, and without a clear-cut foe we cannot define a victory. We can kill those who threaten us and the new Iraqi regime, and we can put the ones we don’t kill on the run, but we can’t ever wipe them out because more are being born and converted all the time and they have safe haven in countries like Iran, Syria and Pakistan where we cannot get at them without initiating new wars that we clearly do not have the will to fight, nor should we.
We are in a mess. Sure, things have been better lately because of the surge and some hard-nosed planning, but we cannot maintain the current level of activity much longer because our military is stretched almost to the breaking point. So we are going to have to gradually bring a significant number of our troops home regardless of who wins the election in November. As we do that, we can expect more trouble-makers to move into Iraq from neighboring countries and more insurgents within the country to pick up their guns and start building their bombs once more.
President Bush’s dream was the creation of an Arab democracy in the midst of the authoritarian Middle East which would serve as a model for other Arab peoples and influence them to turn away from religious fundamentalism toward a freer way of life more like ours so they would not feel threatened by us or threaten us in return. I too liked the dream. Trouble was, it now appears to have been JUST a dream with practically no chance of becoming reality. Our leaders failed to give sufficient weight to the fact that we are dealing with a different culture in the Muslim world and a totally different way of looking at life.
So back to the question of what to do now: Should we stay in Iraq for an unlimited length of time, as Republican candidate for president John McCain reportedly has advocated, pursuing what now appears to be a very faint prospect of making the “impossible” dream come true, or should we take satisfaction in the fact that we eliminated an evil dictator who was threatening us and might very well have attacked us if we had not struck him down? We can also take satisfaction in bringing a chance of freedom to a people who had long been beneath the tyrant’s heel and recognize that it is now up to them to make of it what they will. We can then withdraw as expeditiously as possible, which is what both Democrat candidates say they want to do.
Our answer to that is but one, albeit a very important one, of the considerations which will go into deciding which party to vote for in November.
Tags: election, Iraq, John McCain, President Bush, war
