Eugene Robinson has an excellent column on Iraq in today’s Washington Post. He suggests that Bush’s plan for Iraq is simply to run out the clock. Then it’s someone else’s problem. Certainly there seems to be no end game in sight; not even a real vision of what an acceptable “end” might look like. For all of the talk of “victory” we hear from Bush supporters, nobody is really describing “victory” in a way that would let us recognize it if it punched us in the face.
Robinson makes clear that he does not blame Petraeus or Crocker on their evasiveness. They are doing their jobs which, in part, is to follow the marching orders coming from the civilian leadership in the Bush administration. They have been tasked with explaining the inexplicable.
Of course, Bush long ago lost any credibility with Congress and the American people on Iraq. It’s understandable that he hides behind Petraeus’s breastplate of medals and Crocker’s thatch of gray hair, sending these loyal and able public servants to explicate the inexplicable: What realistic goal is the United States trying to achieve in Iraq? And in what parallel universe is this open-ended occupation making our nation safer?
Even the most basic question of any war is undefined: Who is the enemy? It was almost painful listening to Petraeus as he faced reporters yesterday and was asked whether Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army were friend or foe. His tortured answer, translated into English, was yes.
In 2003, when Bush launched this elective war, the enemy was Saddam Hussein’s wack-job regime. The dictator and his minions were quickly defeated, but then U.S. forces faced two new enemies — al-Qaeda in Iraq (which we created by invading the country and destroying its brutal government) and a popular insurgency based in the country’s Sunni minority (ditto).
Having midwifed these monsters, the Decider told us we had to stay in Iraq to slay them. What actually happened, though, was that Sunni tribal leaders, many of whom were participants in the anti-American insurgency, decided they had had enough of the al-Qaeda fighters’ Taliban-like ways — and also saw that they were in danger of being marginalized by the Shiite majority. This so-called Awakening began before Bush’s troop escalation, which was artfully labeled a “surge.” It’s not going out on a limb to predict that the Awakening will last precisely as long as the Awakened believe it is in their interest.
Some al-Qaeda combatants remain, however, and the insurgency is not totally quiescent. Meanwhile, the struggle among armed Shiite factions for power and wealth has intensified. It’s a messy situation, to be sure, but there’s no way to call it a war anymore. Our presence in Iraq is an occupation, pure and simple. As in any occupation, the “enemy” consists of people who don’t want the occupying troops in their country — and also people who do want the occupying troops in their country, as long as they see some political advantage in having those troops there to attack.
That brings us to an ad on YouTube.
Iraq: Six Months At A Time
This is what happens when you have your head somewhere dark and stinky. The whole crew had their eyes fixed on one spot, and refused to pay attention to details that might have interfered.
Harvard educated doesn’t always mean broadly educated or able to think critically.