War
Harry Reid finally came out and says what everyone already knows: the war is lost. Of course a crazy story like this VT shooting is more resonant to Americans than the constant stream of horror that comes out of Iraq. Exceptional things happening to everyday people is what makes good fiction and its what makes interesting news. The story is complex, we will never really understand why he did what he did. It makes for great television. (I say this with all respect for the people who died and those survived this tragedy)
On the the other hand the hundreds of men, women and children dying every in Iraq isn’t a good story. A good story has a mystery. It has suspense. The story in Iraq is predictable and tragically explicable. The only outstanding question about this war is how much longer and how many more people need to die. Forty innocent people die every day in Iraq as a direct result of this predictable and avoidable tragedy. The worst thing is that we can say for certain, even if we leave tomorrow, is that thousands more will die.
April 20th, 2007 09:59
I don’t know if that’s the case. I’m extremely anti-this war, but I don’t think the problem is that we’ve “Lost” (because that implies we could have won). In terms of numbers and taking over the country, we were successful. In my opinion, that’s not the issue. The issue is that we destroyed a country for no reason. We went into a place with no plan for a victory (which, in turn, means no way of defeat) with no knowledge of the country itself, and we ruined the country beyond repair. We didn’t “Lose” the war, we only f-d it up.
At least, that’s my outlook. Losing implies that the Iraqis won. And I think we can all agree that no one in Iraq is a winner.
April 20th, 2007 14:38
I agree with Librocrat’s response. Perhaps to clarify the debate, we need to make a distinction between two objectives that are conflated in referring to “the war” in general:
A) the American troops and allies attacked Iraq (for unsound reasons, thus making this an unjustified war), and toppled Hussein’s regime. This limited objective was achieved.
B) the attempt to stabilize Iraq, establish a democratic government, develop the institutions needed for the Iraqi people to govern themselves, and gradually withdraw the American troops as the Iraqis take over their governance and security. Obviously, these objectives have not been achieved.
The question I have is, should we refer to (B) as part of the same “war” as (A)? The U.S. propaganda sources conflate them under the title of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (or maybe I’m wrong about this… what was the title they had for (A)?). One problem with continuing to use the term “war” to refer to (B) is that it frames the problems in Iraq as requiring a military response, which supports the Bush Administration and other hawks arguments to keep the troops there (and frames their critiques of the democrats for faltering in their “support of the troops”). Following Librocrat’s comment, it might be better to drop the “war” framing altogether, to consider that to have ended with (A), and to adopt different framings that would support justifications of withdrawing the troops and addressing the problems in Iraq through other means, particularly, massive amounts of economic and humanitarian assistance (e.g., stop spending $300 billion per year on our military-industrial complex and donate that amount to economic and infrastructure projects in Iraq).
This shift in framing is partly achieved by shifting from “our war” to “their civil war,” as in the following quote from the article Steve cites:
“Our troops won the war clearly, cleanly and quickly,” said Rep. David Obey (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations Committee. “But now they are stuck in a civil war,” and the only solution is a political and diplomatic compromise. “And there is no soldier who can get that done,” he added.
April 20th, 2007 14:59
two more comments:
1) what I called the (B) stage above might be termed “reconstruction.”
2) The question should be raised of why the Bush Administration wants to frame this reconstruction phase as a continuation of the war, thereby justifying the use of military force to guide this reconstruction. Of course the U.S. has an enormous responsibility to the Iraqi people to help them rebuild their country. But why does this responsibility have to be performed in military ways, rather than through no-strings-attached economic assistance? Of course this is a naive question. The Bush Administration has a particular model of reconstruction that they want the Iraqis to conform to, and they will use the military to force them to do so. Unfortunately for the embattled Iraqi people and the U.S. troops, the Bush Admin’s preconceived, pro-capitalist, pro-corporate-oil model cannot realistically be set-up currently in a way that is conducive to ending the civil war and establishing stable, democratic institutions.