Posted on 03/02/2007 6:13:38 AM PST by Tolik
It's make it or break it in Iraq in 2007. Or so we are told, as America nears four years of costly efforts in Iraq. But how did we get to this situation, to this fury over a war once supported by 70 percent of the public and a majority of Congress, but now orphaned by both?
How did a serious country, one that endured Antietam, sent a million doughboys to Europe in a mere year, survived Pearl Harbor, Monte Cassino, Anzio, the Bulge, Tarawa, Iwo and Okinawa, the Yalu, Choisun, Hue and Tet, come to the conclusion — between the news alerts about Britney Spears’ shaved head and fights over Anna Nicole Smith’s remains — that Iraq, in the words of historically minded Democratic senators, was the “worst” and the “greatest” “blunder,” “disaster,” and “catastrophe” in our “entire” history?
Even with all the tragic suffering, our losses, by the standard of past American wars, have not been unprecedented, especially given the magnitude of the undertaking — namely, traveling 7,000 miles to remove a dictator and foster democracy in the heart of the ancient caliphate. This was not a 1953 overthrow of an Iranian parliamentarian. Nor was it a calculated 1991 decision to let the Shiite and Kurdish revolts be crushed by Saddam. And it was most certainly not a cynical ploy to pit Baathist Iraq against theocratic Iran. Instead, it was an effort to allow an electorate to replace a madman.
There were always potential landmines that could go off, here and abroad, if the news from the battlefield proved to be dispiriting.
First, George Bush ran for president as a realist, who turned Wilsonian only after 9/11, in the belief that removing Saddam and leaving democracy in his wake could break up the nexus between Middle Eastern terrorism and autocracy.
But his conservative base was always skeptical of anything even approaching internationalist activism. And his Democratic opponents were not about to concede his idealism. So when times got tough, the president’s chief reservoir of diehard supporters proved to be principled Lieberman Democrats and McCain Republicans — neither group a natural majority nor, after 2000, with any natural affinity for the president.
Second, after the relatively easy victories in Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, Serbia, and Afghanistan, the American public became accustomed to removing thugs in weeks and mostly by air and light ground-support. All during the 1990s, the more we made use of the military the more we cut it, until things came to a head in Iraq in a postwar effort that has been both long and confined largely to the ground.
Since the most recent conflicts had been a far cry from the mess of Vietnam, Democrats saw that the upside of regaining lost stature on national security outweighed the dangers of being charged with war-mongering from hard-core leftists. And so they outdid themselves and the president in loudly voting for Iraq — but apparently only as long as casualties were to be minimal and public and media support steadfast and overwhelming.
There were numerous reasons to remove Saddam — 23, according to the Congress that authorized the war — but the administration privileged just one, the sensible fear of weapons of mass destruction. That was legitimate and understandable, and would prove effective so long as either a postwar weapons-trove turned up or the war and its aftermath finished without a hitch.
Unfortunately neither proved to be the case. So with that prime rationale discredited, the partisan Congress suddenly reinvented itself in protesting that it had really voted for war on only one cause, not 23. And when the news and evidence both went bad, that lone reason was now pronounced null and void and hardly a basis for war.
Third, Afghanistan also loomed large. Right after 9/11, Afghanistan, rather than secular and once-defeated Iraq, was seen as the tougher nut to crack, that warlords’ mountainous graveyard of British and Russian imperial troops. But when the Taliban fell in eight weeks, and a consensual government was in place within a year, then by that optimistic arithmetic, the three weeks it took to remove Saddam might mean less than six months before new elections could be held there. Suddenly the old prewar warnings of thousands of Americans dead were forgotten, as the public apparently assumed the peace in Iraq would ensue in half the time it took in Afghanistan. This analogy has proven inapt.
Fourth, this war was debated through one election and fought through two. Given the prewar furor over Iraq, the miraculous three-week victory over Saddam lent itself to a natural tendency afterwards to be conservative, hoarding hard-won — but easily lost — political capital.
So, with each new challenge — the looting, the first pullback from Fallujah, the reprieve given Sadr — the administration hesitated. Understandably it was afraid to lose broad public support for the conflict, or to restart a war already won, since that would only incite an inherently hostile media that had been temporarily muzzled, but not defanged, by an astounding victory.
Apparently, after the announcement of “Mission Accomplished,” and leading up to the 2004 elections, no one wanted CNN broadcasting live footage from a new siege of Hue in Fallujah. In the process, public support for the war was insidiously and slowly lost, by an Abu Ghraib or a grotesque televised beheading unanswered by a tough American retaliation against the militias. The terrorists learned from our own domestic calculus that each month of televised IEDs was worth one or two U.S. senators suddenly dropping their support for the war.
Fifth, the Sunni border-nations wanted Saddam defanged, but never removed entirely. Muslim lamentations for Saddam’s slaughter of his own were always trumped by his usefulness in keeping down the Shiite fanatics, both in Iran and at home. But the enemy of my enemy in the Middle East is not always my friend, so the Shiites did not instinctively thank the Americans who removed Saddam, or who gave them the franchise.
The result was Orwellian: We allowed the downtrodden Shiite majority one person / one vote, and in exchange Sadr and his epigones were freed to kill us; we championed Sunni minority-rights and got in exchange Sunni tolerance for Baathist and al Qaeda killers.
Through it all, competent and professional American diplomats and soldiers who sought peace for both were libeled by both. Islamists, taking their talking points from the American and European Left, complained about conspiracies and expropriations on the part of those who had in fact ensured that Iraqi petroleum would, for the first time, be subject to public transparency and autonomy.
Sixth, Europeans who profited from Saddam probably wanted Saddam gone, but wanted the U.S. to do it. In the same manner they profit from Iran, yet want Iran quieted and the U.S. to do it. In the same manner they want terrorists rounded up, jailed, and renditioned, but the U.S. to do it.
All the while a Chirac abroad was whipping up the Arab Street, or a Schroeder was awarding financial credits to Germans doing business with the Iranian theocracy, or a Spain or an Italy or a Germany was indicting the very American military and intelligence officers who protected them.
The European philosophy on the Iraq war was to play the anti-American card to envious European crowds all the way up to that delicate point of irrevocably offending the United States. Then, but only then, pull back abruptly with whimpers about NATO, the Atlantic relationship, and Western solidarity, just before a riled America gets wise and itself pulls away from these ingrates for good.
Somehow a war to remove a mass-murdering psychopath — a psychopath with his hands on a trillion-dollars worth of petroleum reserves, with a long record of attacking four of his neighbors and of harboring and subsidizing terrorists — who, once removed, would be replaced with the first truly consensual government in the history of the Arab Middle East, ended up being perceived, for all the reasons cited above, as something it was not.
But if we have an orphaned war that is dubbed lost, it nevertheless can still be won. None of our mistakes has been fatal; none is of a magnitude unprecedented in past wars; all have been cataloged; and few are now being repeated. We now understand the politics of our Iraqi odyssey, with all its triangulations, and the ruthlessness of our enemies.
Not arguments, rhetoric, pleading, or money right now can save the democracy in Iraq. The U.S. military alone, in the very little remaining time of this spring and summer, can give Iraqis the necessary window of security and confidence to govern and protect themselves, and thereby to allow the donors, peacekeepers, compromises, and conferences to follow.
If General Petraeus can bring a quiet to Baghdad, then all the contradictions, mistakes, cheap rhetoric, and politicking of the bleak past will mean nothing in a brighter future.
We are talking about support for the War...not the economy. By pushing 'shopping' as a euphemism for carry on normally, it did not get the American public INVOLVED in the war effort.
"keep on shoppin'" was exactly the medicine the economy needed.
I could not be in greater disagreement. At the time I was outraged that the American people were held in such low esteem by the President that we were asked to do nothing more than be consumers of goods and services. Then the government began clamping down on private activity. The airlines were the worse but lots of other segments of society were also put under the microscope. This was Big Brother setting out to protect us for our own good. The solution was elitist from the beginning.
There was no call to arms. There was no effort to engage the citizenry in meaningful activity to fight this war.
I do not believe the government even today has the slightest clue about fighting terrorism. It is about more than police security and military action. It is a cultural struggle for the hearts and minds of us as a people. That war is being lost by inches every day.
Okie is correct ....
The Democrats wanted sacrifice - read more taxes, more big government programs.
We didn't need a full scale military mobilization and build up similar to what happened after Pearl Harbor. I doubt that if the President had asked for sacrifice, there would have been zero intention by the politicians to spend the additional taxes on military - but it would have gone for non-military programs.
And - if we HAD done the "lets sacrifice because we are at war" - we would have likely had our economy go into the tank - which would have been quite acceptable by the Democrats.
Mike
There is no question that, under the circumstances, "Keep on shoppin'" were the best fighting words available.
There is no question that, under the circumstances, "Keep on shoppin'" were the best fighting words available.
I am not disputing that a strong economy is essential to the war effort.
My issue is that the American people were told that shopping would be the sum total of their contribution to the war effort. We weren't asked to sacrifice a thing - quite the contrary. The President set up disastrous expectations by insisting that the war would not impact us in any way.
Now we complain that Americans have lost their stomach for war, but that comes from the top.
Tks. as usual VDH nails it.
If what you are saying is true, then the American people either a.) weren't listening or were b.) incapable of understanding the President's message.
Personally, I don't believe either is the case.
From the outset, the President promised that this war would be a long and arduous one and could last a generation. That it should be hard should come as no surprise.
People who heard him say "no sacrifice will be necessary" were hearing what they wanted to hear.
At the same time, this was not a war that would require us to buy savings bonds, collect scrap iron or ration sugar -- or, in the fevered desires of Democrats, require us to raise taxes or institute a draft. To have represented it as requiring such would have been an unmitigated lie.
I'm sorry, but you're flat-out wrong.
The Vice President went on talk shows to say that we would be "greeted as liberators" by the Iraqis. The President assured us that we wouldn't need as many troops as the generals were saying.
All the signs were there, that this would be a relatively painless and easy war. I really think that they believed that - they never anticipated that it could turn out as it had, or they wouldn't have so poorly managed the war itself, much less the public relations battle.
Our war on terror is well begun, but it is only begun. This campaign may not be finished on our watch, yet it must be and it will be waged on our watch.
The State of the Union address, January, 2002
Moreover, VP Cheney's comment on Meet The Press, when taken in context, makes perfectly good sense.
The Iraq War, itself, was relatively short and fully successful. We accomplished our objectives in fairly short order. And, if the elections we made possible are any indication, we were "greeted as liberators" -- by the vast majority of Iraqis.
What has been going on in Iraq ever since is another battle in the War on Terror -- against al-Qaeda and the surrogates of the Iranian mullahs. And we are fighting them in Iraq, on ground of our choice, rather than here in the U.S. or elsewhere. It could just as easily be in Somalia. That it happens to be in Iraq was a strategic choice for the U.S.
A fair reading of Mr. Cheney's comments would reveal this truth. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find the exact context of Cheney's remarks. Liberals are fond of quoting them, but you have to sort thru pages and pages of Google to find the original transcript -- which you're invited to read (below). Note that the term "liberators" orginates with Russert:
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Our objective will be, if we go in, to defeat whatever forces oppose us, to take down the government of Saddam Hussein, and then to follow on with a series of actions such as eliminating all the weapons of mass destruction, finding where they are and destroying them, preserving the territorial integrity of Turkey. As I say, standing up a broadly representative government that’s preserving the territorial integrity of Iraq and standing up a broadly representative government of the Iraqi people. Those will be our objectives.
Meet The Press, March 16, 2003
Snip...
MR. RUSSERT: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
Now, if we get into a significant battle in Baghdad, I think it would be under circumstances in which the security forces around Saddam Hussein, the special Republican Guard, and the special security organization, several thousand strong, that in effect are the close-in defenders of the regime, they might, in fact, try to put up such a struggle. I think the regular army will not. My guess is even significant elements of the Republican Guard are likely as well to want to avoid conflict with the U.S. forces, and are likely to step aside.
Now, I can’t say with certainty that there will be no battle for Baghdad. We have to be prepared for that possibility. But, again, I don’t want to convey to the American people the idea that this is a cost-free operation. Nobody can say that. I do think there’s no doubt about the outcome. There’s no question about who is going to prevail if there is military action. And there’s no question but what it is going to be cheaper and less costly to do it now than it will be to wait a year or two years or three years until he’s developed even more deadly weapons, perhaps nuclear weapons. And the consequences then of having to deal with him would be far more costly than will be the circumstances today. Delay does not help.
Meet The Press, March 16, 2003
Thank you. The Cheney quote proves my point, especially the entire second paragraph.
They didn't anticipate the resistance, didn't anticipate the sectarian violence, and thought that the only thing our troops had to fear was the Republican Guard.
Russert might have used the word "liberators" first, but Dick Cheney's smart enough to not repeat it (twice!) unless he thought it apt.
You also didn't address the fact that the Administration under-staffed the war, providing fewer troops than many generals wanted.
Let's face facts - the Administration expected a very different kind of war than we have been fighting. The pre-war plans turned out to be totally inadequate, or Rumsfeld wouldn't have been fired and we wouldn't need the troop surge noe.
And W sold the American public on the kind of war he thought we were going to fight, not the war we ended up in.
"Welcomed as liberators" could be construed as an ill-advised overstatement...as a sound bit, but not as an expression of policy or expectations.
Looking at the entire quote -- and recalling the background of the President's pronouncements on the issue -- I'm not troubled by Cheney's comment...at all.
Perhaps, it is a matter of "nuance"...
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