Peace With Honor... Again?
1/10/06
by Robert Crump

In the five years since the shocking attacks on September 11, 2001, much has changed for the people of the Middle East and the United States. Wars have erupted, regimes have been changed, the price of a barrel of oil has risen 60 percent, and religious fundamentalism has metastasized in the Muslim world. Three thousand American lives have been lost, another twenty thousand Americans have been wounded, and over 300 billion dollars have been spent on a war that the president admits we are not winning.

President Bush claims we are at war with "an extremist group of folks in Iraq." He says our enemies there "hate us for our freedom." He routinely asserts his belief that the war the United States is now engaged in "is a war against a group of killers determined to destroy our way of life." And yet the only thing he asks from the citizens of this country is their continued faith and support for his aimless policies.

To be entirely fair to the president, I must admit that free elections have been held in Iraq, a new government has been established, and an evil dictator has been removed from power. But the lack of WMD, in addition to a nonexistent nuclear weapons program, whose evidence Vice-President Dick Cheney said on Meet The Press was "irrefutable," supports the conclusion that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States, and that the Bush administration was less than fully honest with the American people when it took the country to war.

The reality is that Saddam Hussein had been effectively contained since the end of the first Gulf War. Even as the US government waged intermittent war against his regime during the ensuing decade, Hussein was unable to contest US air superiority over Iraq, and the US subsequently did not lose one single warplane while patrolling the Iraqi sky. Containment worked against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and it was working against Saddam Hussein prior to the American invasion in 2003.

Then came 9/11 and suddenly regime change entered the national lexicon as neoconservatives in the Bush administration undertook a concerted effort to rush this nation haphazardly into an unnecessary war that was conducted poorly at best. To make matters worse, evidence now suggests that little effort was put forth in the post invasion planning. In the weeks and months following the invasion, the American reconstruction effort headed by Paul Bremer and the CPA was entirely inadequate as detailed in Rajiv Chandrasekaran's compelling book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

No victory gardens have been planted, no new energy policies have been implemented, and not one single tax cut has been rescinded since 9/11. Meanwhile, President Bush continues to inflate the federal budget while insisting that Congress make his tax cuts permanent, in spite of the fact that this country has always raised taxes and decreased non discretionary spending in a time of war. Only Lyndon Johnson promised the American people "guns and butter" and that effort failed on all fronts. More germane to this discussion, President Bush has failed to ask this generation to rise up and meet the challenges before it in a manner consistent with his characterization that the war on terror is one in which our entire way of life is endangered.

In my time studying the history of this country, I have spent countless hours reading about the sacrifices made by those that came before us. I have read of our colonial forefathers struggle at Brooklyn Heights and Valley Forge. Much time has been devoted to the study of their ancestors dreadful losses endured at Antietam, Gettysburg, and The Wilderness. From my grandfather I have learned first hand of a place called Okinawa and the sacrifice his generation made on that island.

Those Americans were asked to do great things for their country. And that is exactly what they did. But then they were led by great individuals like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. The greatness the American people can aspire to is infinite when they are led honestly and competently. Unfortunately, the leadership this president has demonstrated can best be summed up with his strident call for everyone to go shopping after
9/11. 

The only people sacrificing in the war in Iraq are the American soldiers and their families at home. The rest of us shuffle about our lives as if nothing is wrong and the country is not at war. We wait in line for three days to purchase a video game player and maul each other when supplies of them run out. My grandfather only shakes his head, mumbles whether this is what his generation sacrificed so much for.

Currently the United States taxpayer is spending 230 million a day in Iraq, 2 billion a week, 8 billion a month, going on 45 months. What sacrifice will future generations of Americans have to make when the foreign banks that have so generously financed this splendid little war begin demanding repayment? There is nothing fiscally conservative about waging war on credit, and as the recent election suggests, even the fiscal conservatives in the country are fed up with the presidents handling of the war.

Recently, the president began making the claim that we can only be defeated in Iraq if we leave before the job is finished. Simultaneously, he says that we cannot leave Iraq until we finish the job. That's the rationale for staying the course this week, but what's the plan for victory Mr. President? Needlessly sacrificing the lives and treasure of this nation to achieve some sort of Nixonian "peace with honor" is not a plan. It's a recipe for military defeat in Iraq and the effective end of the your presidency.

The beginning of the end of the American adventure in Iraq began on February
22, 2006, with the bombing of the Al-Askari Mosque in the city of Samarra. Over the ensuing 10 months sectarian strife has gradually evolved into civil war. As bewildering as the conduct of this war has been thus far, it is equally confusing why this country spent the greater part of this year debating the meaning of the term civil war while American soldiers found themselves caught in the middle of a new and ever dangerous war. Semantic debates over the description of the war in Iraq means little to those that are actually fighting it.

The outstanding problem facing the US effort in Iraq is political and economic in nature and will not be solved by escalating the conflict there. Yet nearly two months after the midterm elections and the firing of Donald Rumsfeld, the president appears likely to do just that by sending in perhaps 30,000 more troops in what is being characterized as a surge to stem the civil war that threatens to undermine the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

While American soldiers continued to die in Iraq, the administration has spent the better part of two months debating what to do next. If all indications are correct the best idea the administration has come up with is to add a few more battalions into the morass in Baghdad. One can only speculate if that has been their conclusion all along, that they have simply been waiting to reveal their plan until the holidays are over, until the timing is right politically to inform the American people that 2007 and beyond will require greater sacrifices from our brave soldiers just so this administration can demonstrate its resolve, save face, buy some more time.

The solution to the problem of the civil war in Iraq can only be solved by the Iraqi's themselves. Only political reconciliation and an agreement on an oil revenue sharing plan can save Iraq, a few more American soldiers cannot save them from themselves. No amount of American firepower or individual courage can coerce a nation of 25 million people to stop murdering each other. The helicopters are on the rooftops in Baghdad and it seems little can be done to salvage the fiasco there.

As a result of the US invasion in 2003, the genie is out of the bottle in the Middle East. The United States appears increasingly unable to shape events in the region and the die may be cast. The great worry today is that a regional war engulfing every nation from Lebanon to Pakistan will result, and its anybody's guess whether staying or leaving will either prevent or instigate that dark prospect.

A potential regional war in the Middle East would pose numerous challenges to American interests in the region and at home, and would surely require increased sacrifices from the American soldier. I have the fullest confidence that this generation can rise to meet any challenge before it, but I sincerely hope that if regional war does come then that the country will have a new set of leaders in the White House that are capable of leading the country of the wilderness we currently finds ourselves in over there.

The future direction of US policy in the Middle East must begin with the recognition that reliance on Middle Eastern oil is counter to US security and economic concerns. Future planners must also recognize that the region may have to be temporarily left to its own devices while regional power brokers like Iran sort out the mess there. Unless the nation is fully prepared to commit itself to a long term presence on the ground throughout the region, our presence in Iraq will not be the beginning of an era of Jeffersonian democracy. It is quite obvious to most observers that the Persians in Tehran are the true benefactors of our Iraq policy, not us, and certainly not the average Iraqi citizen.

There are many things I am unsure in life, but if there is one thing I am quite convinced of it is this; George W. Bush is not to be trusted with the lives of this generation anymore. He has spent all of his political capital. His administration has proven itself to be completely incapable of making honest intelligent decisions in a time of war, and even worse, appears unwilling to adapt to the changing circumstances on the ground in Iraq and the region beyond. A discussion of the situation in Afghanistan and the challenges we face there as a result of US policy failures is a subject for another time, as is the possibility of air strikes against Iran in the coming days.

The war in Iraq today is George Bush's war. It is a Republican war in fact, but will surely affect all Americans should we suffer a humiliating defeat there. The Bush administration no longer possesses the ability to influence the outcome in Iraq, no matter what the rhetoric coming from the White House says. The administration does not possess any magic potion to cure the problem of civil war in Iraq. Anyone holding on to the grand illusion that in the coming days President Bush will reveal some new strategy for victory in Iraq will surely be disappointed. Again.

The war in Iraq appears all over but the killing, and as the nation begins to turn its attention to the 2008 election, where we go from here is anybody's guess. President Bush has repeatedly remarked in recent months that it will be up to the next president to decide when the United States exits Iraq. For a president that claims he's "the decider," and once boasted that he wants to solve the problems facing the United States today, that he doesn't want to pass the country's problems on to future administrations, the decision to pass the buck on the inevitable withdrawal of American forces in Iraq is the most telling sign of the lack of honest, competent, and courageous leadership in Washington today. Let us hope that we choose wiser next time we elect the leader of the free world.