Wednesday, January 10, 2007
We Can Win Iraq - But We Don't Want To
We lack the will to win Iraq.
Regular readers should be surprised to learn I believe victory in Iraq can be won. Not only can we win the war, but we can also win the peace. Moreover, the problems we face have more to with our own irresponsibility, stupidity, self-centeredness and lack of resolve than the recent explosion of sectarian violence in that horrible place.
In short, we are unwilling to make the sacrifices needed to win.
Tonight, as I write this, the president is expected to repudiate former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's war policies by announcing a substantial increase in the number of American solders sent to Iraq. He is also expected to announce a jobs program for Iraq.
Mr. Bush remains true to form with too little, too late. But why too little?
In thinking about what it takes to conquer a nation with a dictatorship form of government and install a genuine, functioning democracy, we should look to the successes of the past. We need not look too far, because we can fairly claim success in Germany and Japan.
At the end of the Second World War, Germany lay shattered and broken. The vaunted German military machine which had rolled over the European continent with astonishing speed was smashed; the great arms factories shattered, along with much else. Clearly, they no longer threatened us or our allies.
We could have withdrawn, as we did at the end of WWI, but we did not. Instead, under the brilliant Secretary of State George C. Marshall, we gave Europe $20 billion, a staggering sum in those days. The Marshall plan required the Europeans to work together to decide how to spend the money, which they did. Some thinkers believe the bodies created by the plan eventually evolved into the European Union. (Read more about the plan here.)
We also established many military bases in Europe, and especially Germany. And guess what - we're still there, some sixty years later.
Not that it took them sixty years to establish an effective democracy; that probably took much less time. However, you can bet it took more than four years.
The United States made huge sacrifices for WWII. People at home accepted rationing and wage-price controls, while the nation fielded huge armies in a titanic struggle.
Nowadays, the vast majority of Americans are unaffected by the war. We continue to drive our gas-hogging SUVs, much to the delight of our enemies. We mourn the loss of over 3,000 American lives over the course of the last four years, but really, that's a tiny fraction of the number killed on our highways each year. (42,000, or 168,000 over four years.)
During WWII, everyone bought bonds to finance the war. But this is being financed by the Chinese buying up our debts. We are not even expected to pay higher taxes to support the war, though it appears likely our children and grandchildren will.
Many of the same things principles that applied to Germany also applied to Japan. That nation is the only one in history to have been attacked with nuclear weapons. We're still there, too.
While we're considering the lessons of history, let's think about the big war we lost - Vietnam. We tried to install a democracy there, too. We tried to turn the war over to the local forces there, too. We left, promising the South Vietnamese aid that, as it turned out, the Congress was too stingy to send. President Lyndon Johnson's request for a half-billion dollar aid package was turned down, and Siagon fell two months later.
If we pour enough into Iraq, we can the outcome we want. To win would require genuine sacrifices. Not an increase in troops of ten or twenty percent, but a doubling or tripling of the forces there. The aim would be to disarm the Iraqi people, and to protect the defenseless survivors. We would need to search every shed, every house, every building for weapons on micro-destruction; pistols and rifles, as well as bomb making supplies. We would need to watch and patrol every street in every city, day and night; siezing arms and explosives and arresting people. At the same time, we would need a new Marshall plan. Money could be given to the Iraqis, conditioned on their internal agreement on how to spend it.
Lastly, we would have to recognize we are there to stay. It might be possible to reduce our troop levels after two or three years of intensive pacification, but we would still need a sizable force, more or less permanantly.
This would work. But we do not have the will to make it work.
It would require tremendous sacrifices of the American people. It would require a military draft, and untold billions of dollars, and tax increases. It would take too much.
But too little effort can only worsen the situation. We cannot build a house with just one nail, or a village with a single barrel of nails. Anything we put up will fall back down. In a previous post, I detailed why the "surge"can only worsen the situation.
Perhaps the president will explain tonight why he is ignoring the lessons of history. Perhaps he will put forth a compelling case for his "surge" in troop level. Perhaps he will give us an intellectually honest, rigorous and thorough discourse which will persuade us that our assessements and the assessements of his generals are mistaken.
Perhaps.
But don't bet money on it.
Regular readers should be surprised to learn I believe victory in Iraq can be won. Not only can we win the war, but we can also win the peace. Moreover, the problems we face have more to with our own irresponsibility, stupidity, self-centeredness and lack of resolve than the recent explosion of sectarian violence in that horrible place.
In short, we are unwilling to make the sacrifices needed to win.
Tonight, as I write this, the president is expected to repudiate former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's war policies by announcing a substantial increase in the number of American solders sent to Iraq. He is also expected to announce a jobs program for Iraq.
Mr. Bush remains true to form with too little, too late. But why too little?
In thinking about what it takes to conquer a nation with a dictatorship form of government and install a genuine, functioning democracy, we should look to the successes of the past. We need not look too far, because we can fairly claim success in Germany and Japan.
At the end of the Second World War, Germany lay shattered and broken. The vaunted German military machine which had rolled over the European continent with astonishing speed was smashed; the great arms factories shattered, along with much else. Clearly, they no longer threatened us or our allies.
We could have withdrawn, as we did at the end of WWI, but we did not. Instead, under the brilliant Secretary of State George C. Marshall, we gave Europe $20 billion, a staggering sum in those days. The Marshall plan required the Europeans to work together to decide how to spend the money, which they did. Some thinkers believe the bodies created by the plan eventually evolved into the European Union. (Read more about the plan here.)
We also established many military bases in Europe, and especially Germany. And guess what - we're still there, some sixty years later.
Not that it took them sixty years to establish an effective democracy; that probably took much less time. However, you can bet it took more than four years.
The United States made huge sacrifices for WWII. People at home accepted rationing and wage-price controls, while the nation fielded huge armies in a titanic struggle.
Nowadays, the vast majority of Americans are unaffected by the war. We continue to drive our gas-hogging SUVs, much to the delight of our enemies. We mourn the loss of over 3,000 American lives over the course of the last four years, but really, that's a tiny fraction of the number killed on our highways each year. (42,000, or 168,000 over four years.)
During WWII, everyone bought bonds to finance the war. But this is being financed by the Chinese buying up our debts. We are not even expected to pay higher taxes to support the war, though it appears likely our children and grandchildren will.
Many of the same things principles that applied to Germany also applied to Japan. That nation is the only one in history to have been attacked with nuclear weapons. We're still there, too.
While we're considering the lessons of history, let's think about the big war we lost - Vietnam. We tried to install a democracy there, too. We tried to turn the war over to the local forces there, too. We left, promising the South Vietnamese aid that, as it turned out, the Congress was too stingy to send. President Lyndon Johnson's request for a half-billion dollar aid package was turned down, and Siagon fell two months later.
If we pour enough into Iraq, we can the outcome we want. To win would require genuine sacrifices. Not an increase in troops of ten or twenty percent, but a doubling or tripling of the forces there. The aim would be to disarm the Iraqi people, and to protect the defenseless survivors. We would need to search every shed, every house, every building for weapons on micro-destruction; pistols and rifles, as well as bomb making supplies. We would need to watch and patrol every street in every city, day and night; siezing arms and explosives and arresting people. At the same time, we would need a new Marshall plan. Money could be given to the Iraqis, conditioned on their internal agreement on how to spend it.
Lastly, we would have to recognize we are there to stay. It might be possible to reduce our troop levels after two or three years of intensive pacification, but we would still need a sizable force, more or less permanantly.
This would work. But we do not have the will to make it work.
It would require tremendous sacrifices of the American people. It would require a military draft, and untold billions of dollars, and tax increases. It would take too much.
But too little effort can only worsen the situation. We cannot build a house with just one nail, or a village with a single barrel of nails. Anything we put up will fall back down. In a previous post, I detailed why the "surge"can only worsen the situation.
Perhaps the president will explain tonight why he is ignoring the lessons of history. Perhaps he will put forth a compelling case for his "surge" in troop level. Perhaps he will give us an intellectually honest, rigorous and thorough discourse which will persuade us that our assessements and the assessements of his generals are mistaken.
Perhaps.
But don't bet money on it.
Labels: Bush, democracy, Germany, Iraq, Japan, Marshall Plan, Rumsfeld, sacrifice, sectarian, surge, Vietnam, weapon
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Blood Will Have Blood
Now brought to you by those same fine folks who started the Iraq War: The Iraq "Surge."
"It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood." MacBeth, Act III, Scene 4.
Less than 60 days after we were assured that the escalating violence in Iraq was aimed at influencing our own elections, the folks who always get it wrong are now saying we need to throw more troops into the fray.
Fellows, if the October violence was aimed at dislodging Republicans from power, why is it now so much worse? What kind of arrogant narcissism thinks that mass killings half a world away are aimed at prying loose the scoundrel's grasp on power? Try to grow up and face your mistakes: you got it wrong, wrong, wrong.
Bill Kristol, among other talking heads, advocates a short deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Iraq, and soon. He says we could change the mission (again) of the occupying force to secure the city of Baghdad.
Boys, here's a tip you can use: don't hose a blaze with gasoline.
In Act III, Lady Macbeth sorrows deeply; grief and conscience stricken, she clearly foresees the deadly consequences of her murderous acts. Shakespeare illustrates the tragic consequences of greedy ambition, pride, and blind lust-for-power. The path of vendetta must run its course; the tragedy, once set in motion, cannot be stopped.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it
-- Omar Khayyam as translated by Fitzgerald.
I would not expect the frat boys in the executive branch to know Macbeth or Omar Khayyam; but you would at least think they looked at Machiavelli back in college.
"The injury we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance." The Prince.
The United States, under the leadership of the Bush administration, attacked and occupied a foreign land out of pride, ignorance, blind ambition and endless arrogance. The United States, its leaders and its people, neither understand nor care to learn about the ancient tribes now suffering in that miserable place. How many Americans know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite? Do Americans know where the Kurds live? (No. The newly appointed head of the Senate Intelligence Committee was embarrassed last week because of his stunning ignorance. Learn some history here.)
The brutal dictator Saddam held the various factions of Iraq together by ruling with an iron fist. By all objective accounts, his treatment of his subjects was horrendous. The world reacted with horror as accounts of attacks on civilian populations with poison gas leaked out.
Before the latest war with Iraq, the suspicion that he still had weapons of mass terror seemed quite reasonable. Saddam himself wanted to make it appear he was hiding those weapons. The world situation called for prudence, wisdom, and strategic thinking.
But the United States cast aside prudence, wisdom and strategic thought by recklessly invading Iraq without bothering to learn about it. Saddam's armies and his political party were crushed. The iron fist restraining the ancient feuds and hatreds was broken.
This is the kind of action one would expect from a power grown soft in the head. It is the act of a bully, taking his fury out on a target, not because he was wronged by that individual, but he was wronged by someone, and someone has to pay.
The phrase coming from our leaders, spoken at various times by president Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Homeland Security Chief Chertoff, the phrase that will become the most haunting and telling phrase of our times is, "No one could have foreseen this."
The truth is, many, many, many people foresaw the bloody consequences of smashing Iraq's iron fist.
Now we are left with "ignorant armies that clash by night." We are left with too many blood feuds and vendettas to count.
The facts on the ground are that Baghdad has already split geographically into Sunni and Shiia neighborhoods. If a Sunni or Shiia strays into the wrong part of the city, death will be slow and painful, but certain. But factions of the Shiia and Sunni camps are also waging war on themselves. The fact is inflation runs at 50 percent in Iraq. The fact is that 60 percent of the men are unemployed.
They join militias because they can. They join militias to protect themselves. They join militias to get revenge.
The facts is that more US troops will not bring back the dead; more US troops will not employ millions of men; more US troops will not bring security to the city.
The fact is that our own general in command of US forces in Iraq opposes bringing more of our troops to the battle.
The "surge" theory finds support from the same right-wing talking heads who thought the invasion was a fine idea. These guys spin their fantasies from the safety of their studios and then go to a comfortable home at night; while on the other side of the earth, real people die.
Please pray with all your might that our leaders become wise. Pray that God will open their eyes. Pray for the poor people of Iraq. Pray for our troops. It would appear that only God can save them now.
"It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood." MacBeth, Act III, Scene 4.
Less than 60 days after we were assured that the escalating violence in Iraq was aimed at influencing our own elections, the folks who always get it wrong are now saying we need to throw more troops into the fray.
Fellows, if the October violence was aimed at dislodging Republicans from power, why is it now so much worse? What kind of arrogant narcissism thinks that mass killings half a world away are aimed at prying loose the scoundrel's grasp on power? Try to grow up and face your mistakes: you got it wrong, wrong, wrong.
Bill Kristol, among other talking heads, advocates a short deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Iraq, and soon. He says we could change the mission (again) of the occupying force to secure the city of Baghdad.
Boys, here's a tip you can use: don't hose a blaze with gasoline.
In Act III, Lady Macbeth sorrows deeply; grief and conscience stricken, she clearly foresees the deadly consequences of her murderous acts. Shakespeare illustrates the tragic consequences of greedy ambition, pride, and blind lust-for-power. The path of vendetta must run its course; the tragedy, once set in motion, cannot be stopped.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it
-- Omar Khayyam as translated by Fitzgerald.
I would not expect the frat boys in the executive branch to know Macbeth or Omar Khayyam; but you would at least think they looked at Machiavelli back in college.
"The injury we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance." The Prince.
The United States, under the leadership of the Bush administration, attacked and occupied a foreign land out of pride, ignorance, blind ambition and endless arrogance. The United States, its leaders and its people, neither understand nor care to learn about the ancient tribes now suffering in that miserable place. How many Americans know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite? Do Americans know where the Kurds live? (No. The newly appointed head of the Senate Intelligence Committee was embarrassed last week because of his stunning ignorance. Learn some history here.)
The brutal dictator Saddam held the various factions of Iraq together by ruling with an iron fist. By all objective accounts, his treatment of his subjects was horrendous. The world reacted with horror as accounts of attacks on civilian populations with poison gas leaked out.
Before the latest war with Iraq, the suspicion that he still had weapons of mass terror seemed quite reasonable. Saddam himself wanted to make it appear he was hiding those weapons. The world situation called for prudence, wisdom, and strategic thinking.
But the United States cast aside prudence, wisdom and strategic thought by recklessly invading Iraq without bothering to learn about it. Saddam's armies and his political party were crushed. The iron fist restraining the ancient feuds and hatreds was broken.
This is the kind of action one would expect from a power grown soft in the head. It is the act of a bully, taking his fury out on a target, not because he was wronged by that individual, but he was wronged by someone, and someone has to pay.
The phrase coming from our leaders, spoken at various times by president Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Homeland Security Chief Chertoff, the phrase that will become the most haunting and telling phrase of our times is, "No one could have foreseen this."
The truth is, many, many, many people foresaw the bloody consequences of smashing Iraq's iron fist.
Now we are left with "ignorant armies that clash by night." We are left with too many blood feuds and vendettas to count.
The facts on the ground are that Baghdad has already split geographically into Sunni and Shiia neighborhoods. If a Sunni or Shiia strays into the wrong part of the city, death will be slow and painful, but certain. But factions of the Shiia and Sunni camps are also waging war on themselves. The fact is inflation runs at 50 percent in Iraq. The fact is that 60 percent of the men are unemployed.
They join militias because they can. They join militias to protect themselves. They join militias to get revenge.
The facts is that more US troops will not bring back the dead; more US troops will not employ millions of men; more US troops will not bring security to the city.
The fact is that our own general in command of US forces in Iraq opposes bringing more of our troops to the battle.
The "surge" theory finds support from the same right-wing talking heads who thought the invasion was a fine idea. These guys spin their fantasies from the safety of their studios and then go to a comfortable home at night; while on the other side of the earth, real people die.
Please pray with all your might that our leaders become wise. Pray that God will open their eyes. Pray for the poor people of Iraq. Pray for our troops. It would appear that only God can save them now.
Labels: Bush, deployment, Iraq, Kristol, Rumsfeld, surge, vendetta
