What are we getting into here? The war is supposed to be over, but every day we hear of another soldier getting killed. Is it worth it? Saddam isn't in power anymore. The locals want us to leave. Why are we still here?
- a Sergeant in the US Army's 4th Infantry Division, stationed north of Baghdad
Who could have envisioned the day when I would get behind Patrick Buchanan on ANYTHING? (No, that sound you heard was NOT Hell freezing over....) In this case, though, we do share a similar concern. While it would seem that the entrance strategy for the war in Iraq was parsed to the Nth degree, the same apparently cannot be said for the exit strategy.
For less than three months after the fall of Baghdad, we have lost almost as many men in Iraq as we did in three weeks of war. One U.S. soldier is now dying there every day.
"Mission Accomplished," read the banner behind President Bush as he spoke from the carrier deck of the Lincoln. But if the original mission – to oust Saddam and end the mortal threat of his weapons of mass destruction – is "accomplished," why are we still there?
What is our new mission? What are the standards by which we may measure success? What will be the cost in blood and treasure? When can we expect to turn Iraq back over to the Iraqis? Or is ours to be a permanent presence, as in postwar Germany and Japan?
If that sergeant does not know what he is doing there, it is because his commander in chief has left him, and us, in the dark. And if the president does not begin soon to lay out the case for why we must keep 150,000 men in Iraq, the American people will begin to demand they be brought home.
We DO have a role and a repsonsibility in post-war Iraq. We are the ones, after all, who blew the country to bits to begin with. The question, though, is what and how much? IS nation-building our responsibility, or would we be better off allowing Iraqis to decide their future? Of course, in the long-term, it is imperative that Iraqis become the stewards of their own destiny. In the short-term, however, you're talking about a country with no democratic tradition and no experience with the rule of law. Having just emerged from almost 30 years of a brutal dictatorship, where does one start? It seems clear that little planning has been done by US officials to answer this question.
To be fair, there was no way to know exactly what would happen immediately after hostilities ceased. Nonetheless, any military planner worthy of the name would have done an exhaustive "what if" analysis in an effort to at least reduce the level of uncertainty. The current situation in Iraq leads me to believe that the Shrub Administration was so concerned with "winning" the war that comparatively little thought was given to any postwar realities.
No, this in NOT another Vietnam, although the parallels certainly invite comparison. It would be a mistake for the public or the media to delve too deep into worrying about "another Vietnam". What Shrub and his military planners must do now is what should have been done prior to the commencement of hostilities: put in place a coherent plan to turn the adminstration of Iraq over to Iraqis.
Leaving Iraq to fend for itself may be an initially brutal and bloody process, but leaving American troops in place indefinitely will be also. It should be the role of Iraqis to determine their fate. Yes, America has a role to play as an example, and we can certainly lend our expertise. Nonetheless, it should not be the long-term role of the US military to do the fighting and dying. In the end, that bloodshed will gain little if anything.
The Shrub Administration has much to answer for. "Mission Accomplished"? Not by a long shot.
