Michael Kinsley blasted the bulls-eye on Iraq in Slate last week. He does that sort of thing a lot. Monster paragraph:
“And consider how modest the administration’s standard of success has become. Can there be any doubt that they would go for a reduction to 100,000 troops—and claim victory—if they had any confidence at all that the gains they brag about would hold at that level of support? The proper comparison isn’t to the situation a year ago. It’s to the situation before we got there. Imagine that you had been told in 2003 that when George W. Bush finished his second term, dozens of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis would be dying violently every month; that a major American goal would be getting the Iraqi government to temper its “de-Baathification” campaign so that Saddam Hussein’s former henchmen could start running things again (because they know how); and “only” 100,000 American troops would be needed to sustain this equilibrium. You might have several words to describe this situation, but success would not be one of them.”
There you have it. I don’t have comprehensive, big-picture knowledge of what’s going on in Iraq. Neither do you, even if you or your child or your sibling are there. Neither, clearly, does W. But I do know that it’s not a war. It’s a foreign policy initiative. There’s a big, important difference. Calling it a war is a public-relations move.
Think about it. If we had enacted an Iraq policy 5-6 years ago that involved, say, diplomacy and containment and inspections and sanctions but no military action, and the situation would have worked out exactly as it has, everyone at all places on the political spectrum would have long since admitted: this has failed, let’s try something else. The far right would have been screaming that.
But according to too many you’re not allowed to say that, because the reality of young people in uniform with weapons and lots of killing shuts down thought and perspective, and it becomes a competition. It becomes about winning, even though no one knows what that means. It becomes, We don’t want to cut and run. We’re fightin’ em over there so we don’t have to fight ‘em here…
Nobody ever put a ribbon decal on their car in support of containment and sanctions and diplomacy, but those things can work. See Reagan, Gorbachev, et al.
Maybe we’ll be smarter the next time somebody tries to snow us by appealing to our patriotism.
Nah…
