This entire experience has been undoubtedly the most frustrating event of my career.
This has been the whole problem from the start. War is not an experiment waged to prove academic or commercial theories. Yet that is exactly what Iraq was intended to be before "soldiers" even arrived in Kuwait. The NeoCons wanted their war (I believe they happened to have accidentally stumbled into the correct one) and the Rumsfeld coven wanted to prove the Clinton/RMA/Rumsfeld vision of warfare as sound. They were all wrong. War is a terrible endeavor for a great purpose-and if the purpose is not great, we should not go to war. In Iraq, given the need for change in the Middle East and the presence of a brutal dictator to boot, the purpose was powerful, but the ends the Bush administration hoped to achieve required more extensive means than decision makers were willing to deploy. The tragedy is that we had the means. We could have sent more forces initially, done more detailed planning, and prepared ourselves for the worst-case scenario-as the military always does when political hacks don't interfere. But Rumsfeld's paladins prevented our military from executing its standard war-gaming and planning procedures while playing havoc with complex deployment processes, afraid that revelations of a potentially higher cost for removing Saddam Hussein might deprive them of their longed-for war. There was need to consult the military on therequirements of an occupation. Even the word "occupation" was avoided as long as possible. And even after we removed the dictator, the Iraqi work force (largely bored youth without a purpose that later picked up guns and joined the insurgency or militias) were shunned and set aside for over inflated American contractors that could not do the job.
In the wake of 9/11 with Al-Queda's main means of support base destroyed, we turned towards the very region that has and will continue to exponentially breed self-appointed executioners of God in large numbers backed up by literally tens to hundreds of millions of Radical cheerleaders. Convinced that the world was without vision and that moral fiber had become a rare commodity even in our own nation, the Bush administration chose to take the route of deception. They made the amature's mistake in using Saddam Hussein's ostensible possession of weapons of mass destruction as its sole rationale for eliminating his regime. And instead of focusing on the future glory of what the Middle East can be and contributing it to the long rich history of how great Muslims were at one time, they chose to obtusely prove a marriage between Osama Bin Ladden and Saddam Hussein. In doing so, they allowed our European "allies" and anti-Americans everywhere to look upon Iraq as only a locale issue rather than a region's cure.
The great test case for the Middle East of our time is Iraq. With its divided population and a tradition of oppression, Iraq is the ultimate laboratory of change in the Middle East. This experiment will shape the region's future for decades to come. This, of course, involves the religion as well because religion, culture, and government demand to be largely intertwined. The phantasmagorical rule book, the Qu'ran, has an unedited Kerouac quality about it, as if Muhammed sufferred from mood swings. Thus justification may be found in its pages for almost any stance (although there is little justification for the slaughter of the innocents such as we see in Iraq - only a few eccentric passages). And of course, the same is true of the Bible. Christians did not jettison the Old Testament, with its traditions for genocide and its injunctions to godly intolerance. But Christians (as a movement) have been seeking redemption for some time (with few locale exceptions in the world over the last century). There is no feeling of need to "defend" god by shedding blood. Can Islam become modern and tolerant? Or does its fate lie in Muhammed's more violent examples and a text that shunts women aside except as domestic slaves or playmates in Paradise, and in its early culture of the sword? Iraq will tell us a lot about Arab ambition, intent, and hope.
Of course, such things cannot be stated on international television. Especially if we want to continue receiving affordable oil barrels from the Lords of Terror in Riyadh, continue our friendship with Egypt for Israel's sake, and maintain a sense of positive diplomacy with the Arab leadership that oppresses the masses. But something this huge and an effort so grand demands that we face the music and take the lumps as they come. We have to understand that we can not deal with this very large problem without it affecting our wallets at the pumps and we have to accept that things will get uglier before they get pretty...
Instead we choose to fight a war on the diplomatic cheap and force ourselves into delusional submission as we continue to coddle the masters, but kill their creations. When those who never served themselves propose theories for fighting our nation's wars, we have virgins writing sex manuals.
On the one hand, you decry the neocons for using war as an experiment to prove academic or commercial theories.
War is not an experiment waged to prove academic or commercial theories. Yet that is exactly what Iraq was intended to be before "soldiers" even arrived in Kuwait. The NeoCons wanted their war (I believe they happened to have accidentally stumbled into the correct one) and the Rumsfeld coven wanted to prove the Clinton/RMA/Rumsfeld vision of warfare as sound. They were all wrong.
I agree wholehartedly for many different reasons. Two principle reasons are the sentiment and moral of our nation in supporting such and endeavor; and the sentiment and reaction of the people whose country you are making war upon.
But then you say:
The great test case for the Middle East of our time is Iraq. With its divided population and a tradition of oppression, Iraq is the ultimate laboratory of change in the Middle East.
After just saying "war is not an experiment waged to prove academic or commercial theory" you are promoting the attack on Iraq as the "ultimate laboratory" of change in the Middle East. You seem to be arguing in favor of the attack upon Iraq because it is a good place to experiment with "academic or commercial theory," right after asserting war is not an experiment.
One of the biggest experiments in Iraq was the "Bush doctrine" (you seldom hear that phrase anymore) of pre-emptive war. That is, the US would be the aggressor nation attacking other nations that it perceived (or misrepresented to be) a threat.
You state that for Iraq, "given the need for change in the Middle East and the presence of a brutal dictator to boot, the purpose was powerful." Maybe so; but one nation attacking another nation because it does not approve of its government or culture is not viewed as a legitimate use of force by most. And regardless of whether we disagree that one nation may legitimately do so or not, we both agree that in the case of Iraq:
the Bush administration chose to take the route of deception. They made the amature's mistake in using Saddam Hussein's ostensible possession of weapons of mass destruction as its sole rationale for eliminating his regime. And instead of focusing on the future glory of what the Middle East can be and contributing it to the long rich history of how great Muslims were at one time, they chose to obtusely prove a marriage between Osama Bin Ladden and Saddam Hussein. In doing so, they allowed our European "allies" and anti-Americans everywhere to look upon Iraq as only a locale issue rather than a region's cure.
The fundamental error with your analysis is that there is no mandate for the US to "cure" the region. Bush could have talked about the glory of the ME all he wanted, and that would not have legitimized attacking Iraq or garned an international consensus for doing so. And without that, without an international consensus that military action was justified or a legitimate act of defense, the US intervention in Iraq was bound to fail because it would automatically be viewed as an unjustified attack and occupation by infidels against Muslems in their holy lands.
Such an experiment is
bound to fail. Particularly when doing so our action will depose a significant minority from power. Thinking that if we just had more troops, or a different Sec. Defense, or done this or that a little differently, everything would have worked out is self-deception. The fundamental problem with the attack on Iraq is
that the US had no legitimate justification for doing so. Without that, the action was
a failure from the day the first troops entered Iraq.
Until we recognize that fundamental point, our efforts in the ME will continue to be a disaster.
Unfortunately, because we have arrogant leadership that mislead us into war and has refused to accept responsibility for its "mistakes," there is no good option for the US in Iraq. Rather than having withdrawn the troops after learning there were no WMDs, the Bush admin has arrogantly maintained the occupation to cover its own mistake. Now when we pull out, it will look like we are withdrawing because we "gave up" on fighting the insurgents, instead of leaving on our own terms because we acknowledged our attack was a mistake.
Nonetheless, it is folly to continue to compound a mistake of attacking Iraq by continuing an indefinite occupation. The US attack is perceived
with jusitification as being illegitimate, and therefore so is its occupation. Those opposing the US, which is a greater and greater part of the ME (even our closest ally Saudi Arabia now calls it illegitimate)
rightly contend that the US is an agressor, an illegitimate occupier of their lands, that they have the right to resist it. That is what is "fueling the fire" (to use your phrase) of growing radicalism in Iraq and the greater middle east today.
The best thing we can do at this point is be honest, acknowledge our mistakes, affirm we accomplished what we set out to do, that we have done our best to help the Iraqis deal with the mess we made, and that we are going to do what we said we would do at the very beginning an leave in 6 months, and that we will make reparations for the damage we caused by our mistake.
That would be the honorable thing to do and the right thing to do. Sure, some would say we are cut-n-running. But for the first time in a long time, the US would be doing the right thing, and ultimately doing the right thing is the only way to win this war of ideals.
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