The Iraq Question
Yesterday I received an email from a soldier stationed in Iraq who reads this blog regularly. The following is an excerpt from that email.
This soldier confirms something that has increasingly become the conventional wisdom among all but the administration's most diehard apologists: that we never had enough troops to secure the country after Saddam's regime fell. This was a colossal strategic blunder on the administration's part, one which contributed to the growth of the insurgency and consigned our troops to a significantly more dangerous and difficult mission. I don't doubt that the architects of this war believed it was the right thing to do, but I think they drastically underestimated the complexity of the task and failed to grasp the countless ways in which it could go wrong.
This same short-sightedness is evident in the way the administration chose to sell the war to the American people. They over-stated intelligence (particularly with regard to Iraq's nuclear capabilities) and played upon public ignorance (always mentioning Iraq and 9/11 in the same breath) to gin up popular support for the war, apparently never stopping to consider what might happen to that popular support when the intelligence didn't pan out and the public finally realized that Iraq and Al Queda were very different enemies. And while they spoke often of war, they made little effort to involve the American people in it. Bush became the first President ever to pass tax cuts during wartime. He never asked average Americans (other than the troops and their families) to make any sacrifices for the war effort. He prematurely declared victory, and his administration has hyped every subsequent milestone as the turning point in the war. Like the boy who cried wolf, Bush has become the President who cried victory. Is it any wonder why public opinion of the war has soured? Even today, the administration is giving contradictory messages. They claim we must stay the course and that we have a long road ahead, while at the same time leaking information about plans to withdraw troops as early as next year, whether or not the insurgency is defeated.
In short, I think this administration has grossly mismanaged both the execution of the war itself and the crucial task of managing public support for the war. Add to that the fact that invading Iraq was a questionable strategic move in the first place, and it's not hard to see why more and more Americans want us to get out of Iraq immediately. Those who advocate withdrawal, however, need to consider the likely consequences of such a move. Besides making the U.S. look weak and emboldening our enemies, premature withdrawal would greatly imperil the people of Iraq. The country might well devolve into Bosnian-style civil war, ethnic group against ethnic group. The resulting failed state would likely become a sanctuary for jihadists. We must do whatever we can to avoid that possibility.
On the other hand, we may reach a point where our presence in Iraq does more harm than good, or when we are simply delaying the inevitable. This is what happened in Vietnam. Had we acknowledged the impossibility of our mission there sooner, we could have saved countless America lives. Admitting defeat is the most difficult decision a leader must ever make. It inevitably means admitting that soldiers have died in vain. But as John Kerry famously asked "how can you ask someone to be the last to die for a mistake?" Fortunately, I don't think we've reached this point yet in Iraq, and I hope we never do. If we ever do reach the point where success is foreclosed, however, I pray that our leaders have the courage to acknowledge it and pull out before any more lives are needlessly lost.
The bottomline is that from where I sit, I don't know enough about the real situation in Iraq to know how we should proceed. I hope that those who know more than me will do whatever it takes to achieve success if success is still possible, even if that means increasing taxes and increasing troop levels. On the other hand, if it ever becomes clear that a bad outcome is inevitable, I hope pride and stubbornness won't result in the unnecessary loss of life, as it so tragically did in Vietnam. Above all, I hope our current and future leaders can learn from the mistakes we've made in the Iraq war and avoid such hubris and incompetence going forward. To anyone in Iraq who may be reading this post, I wish you the best of luck and hope that you know how much we all (including the war's critics) appreciate the sacrifices that you are making on a daily basis. Stay safe.
"I am a young, republican soldier (socially liberal/I have no way of knowing whether this particular soldier's views are typical of our troops serving in Iraq, but his frustrations certainly seem reasonable, and they are shared by many observers here at home, myself included.
fiscally conservative) who continues to support the
Iraq war yet has been extremely dismayed by our
current strategy in Iraq. As you know, the new Iraqi
constitution is supposed to be finished in five days.
I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on
it and whether we should leave or stay in Iraq. I
personally think that we're in a Catch-22. We didn't
provide enough troops to secure the country after
the invasion and we now have a full-blown insurgency
that will take years and years to defeat. Plus, I'm
afraid that the administration's talk of reducing our
presence before Iraq has some stability will make
our efforts here end in vain."
This soldier confirms something that has increasingly become the conventional wisdom among all but the administration's most diehard apologists: that we never had enough troops to secure the country after Saddam's regime fell. This was a colossal strategic blunder on the administration's part, one which contributed to the growth of the insurgency and consigned our troops to a significantly more dangerous and difficult mission. I don't doubt that the architects of this war believed it was the right thing to do, but I think they drastically underestimated the complexity of the task and failed to grasp the countless ways in which it could go wrong.
This same short-sightedness is evident in the way the administration chose to sell the war to the American people. They over-stated intelligence (particularly with regard to Iraq's nuclear capabilities) and played upon public ignorance (always mentioning Iraq and 9/11 in the same breath) to gin up popular support for the war, apparently never stopping to consider what might happen to that popular support when the intelligence didn't pan out and the public finally realized that Iraq and Al Queda were very different enemies. And while they spoke often of war, they made little effort to involve the American people in it. Bush became the first President ever to pass tax cuts during wartime. He never asked average Americans (other than the troops and their families) to make any sacrifices for the war effort. He prematurely declared victory, and his administration has hyped every subsequent milestone as the turning point in the war. Like the boy who cried wolf, Bush has become the President who cried victory. Is it any wonder why public opinion of the war has soured? Even today, the administration is giving contradictory messages. They claim we must stay the course and that we have a long road ahead, while at the same time leaking information about plans to withdraw troops as early as next year, whether or not the insurgency is defeated.
In short, I think this administration has grossly mismanaged both the execution of the war itself and the crucial task of managing public support for the war. Add to that the fact that invading Iraq was a questionable strategic move in the first place, and it's not hard to see why more and more Americans want us to get out of Iraq immediately. Those who advocate withdrawal, however, need to consider the likely consequences of such a move. Besides making the U.S. look weak and emboldening our enemies, premature withdrawal would greatly imperil the people of Iraq. The country might well devolve into Bosnian-style civil war, ethnic group against ethnic group. The resulting failed state would likely become a sanctuary for jihadists. We must do whatever we can to avoid that possibility.
On the other hand, we may reach a point where our presence in Iraq does more harm than good, or when we are simply delaying the inevitable. This is what happened in Vietnam. Had we acknowledged the impossibility of our mission there sooner, we could have saved countless America lives. Admitting defeat is the most difficult decision a leader must ever make. It inevitably means admitting that soldiers have died in vain. But as John Kerry famously asked "how can you ask someone to be the last to die for a mistake?" Fortunately, I don't think we've reached this point yet in Iraq, and I hope we never do. If we ever do reach the point where success is foreclosed, however, I pray that our leaders have the courage to acknowledge it and pull out before any more lives are needlessly lost.
The bottomline is that from where I sit, I don't know enough about the real situation in Iraq to know how we should proceed. I hope that those who know more than me will do whatever it takes to achieve success if success is still possible, even if that means increasing taxes and increasing troop levels. On the other hand, if it ever becomes clear that a bad outcome is inevitable, I hope pride and stubbornness won't result in the unnecessary loss of life, as it so tragically did in Vietnam. Above all, I hope our current and future leaders can learn from the mistakes we've made in the Iraq war and avoid such hubris and incompetence going forward. To anyone in Iraq who may be reading this post, I wish you the best of luck and hope that you know how much we all (including the war's critics) appreciate the sacrifices that you are making on a daily basis. Stay safe.
posted by A.L. at 11:49 AM
1 Comments:
Thank you! That was a great write up. I completely disagreed with the reasons why we went to war, but now understand that pulling out is the wrong answer. But if we are going to stay and finish this properly, we need more, and better equipped, troops. And unfortunately I don't see that happening any time soon.
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