Iraq: Can't Win, Can't Break Even, Can't Quit
Steve Shives
March 21, 2007
With the war in Iraq entering its fifth year, with many more likely to come, it’s as good a time as ever to take a step back and evaluate where we’ve been, where we are, and where we can go from here (for the sake of brevity and solidarity I, like everyone else who writes about a war they don’t have to fight themselves, will use “we” to refer to the men and women fighting the war on our side, even though I have absolutely nothing to do with it). Our situation in Iraq is defined in three ways. With apologies to Allen Ginsberg:
We can’t win. The more insurgents we kill, the more appear to take their places. The more fighting is done, the more there is to do. Part of the reason is that this is unlike the wars we studied in history class; this isn’t about capturing territory from the enemy—we’ve already got the whole country. We can’t control it and have no idea what to do with it, but we’ve got it.
Though the Bush administration has resisted a concrete timetable for troop withdrawal, it has highlighted a series of benchmarks in its rhetoric since the war began. Each of the touted benchmarks has been reached, with none of the promised improvements following. Saddam has been captured, tried and executed; control of the Iraqi government has been handed over from the military occupiers to the Iraqis; elections have come and gone. Our troops have not been greeted as liberators, and according to Dick Cheney the insurgence has been in its “last throes” for almost two years.
What does winning in Iraq even mean? In its National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, the White House defines winning as a three-stage process. In the short term, Iraq is to begin fighting terrorists, holding elections and rebuilding its economy; in the medium term, Iraq is to have a strong constitutional government in place and be “in the lead fighting terrorists and insurgents and providing its own security”; in the long term, Iraq is to be a peaceful, united, democratic, secure nation free of terrorists and insurgents that serves as a gleaming beacon to carry the republican ideal to the rest of the middle east.[1]
That strategy was released over 16 months ago. Whether Iraq has even reached the medium term stage is arguable, three years and ten months after the end of “major combat operations.”[2]
We can’t break even. From this vantage point, the above definition of victory sounds optimistic to the point of naiveté. The situation Iraqis are faced with now is even worse than most of them had it under Saddam Hussein. And life under Saddam was no picnic: Kurds and Shiite Muslims were brutally subjugated, tens of thousands were murdered, and international relief shipments of food and medicine meant for the suffering people of Iraq were diverted to government warehouses.[3] How can things possibly be worse now?
According to a survey released by the United Nations in May 2005, many Iraqis have health care inferior to that available under Saddam. The water is filthier, the electrical grid is unstable, and the literacy rate—especially for women—is stagnate.[4] Oh yes, and the constant kidnappings, torture and terrorism. The most recent suicide bombing, outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, killed four and injured thirty.
Saddam was a vicious dictator and mass-murderer, but the chaos we triggered in removing him from power has been more dangerous to the Iraqis than he was. In place of a brutal and oppressive government, there is now a wobbly regime largely powerless to combat constant assaults on the people from private militias, terrorist groups, even its own soldiers and police.[5] Scaling the violence back to Saddam-era levels would be an improvement, but even that seems Quixotic.
We can’t quit. This one’s the real killer. The situation in Iraq is appalling—terrible for us and terrible for the innocent Iraqis who are stuck living with it. But at this point, what can we do about it? Coalition troops and the Iraqi Security Forces are doing the best they can against an endless and fearless enemy. It’s tempting to agree with those who have been calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. That’s a position that’s hard to argue against—over 3,000 American troops have already been killed for absolutely nothing; what possible reason could there be to allow even more to die?
But what happens after we go? It was we, afterall, who instigated the war. Saddam Hussein, evil brute that he was, never attacked us, never threatened to attack us, and never helped anyone else attack us. Supporters of the war point out that the invasion was nonetheless legal and justified, since Saddam’s expulsion of U.N. weapons inspectors violated the ceasefire signed after the Gulf War in 1991; after four years of blood-soaked anarchy, that strikes me as a pitiful justification. If we leave now, do we abandon the Iraqis to this nightmare we created? Is that the act of a just nation? No. Neither was starting the war in the first place, but we can’t undo that one.
So what is the answer? How do we win, bring peace to Iraq and withdraw with a little of the honor and class that was missing when we went in? I admit that I have no clue, which, sadly for everyone over there killing and getting killed, puts me ahead of the people in charge.
We can’t win. The more insurgents we kill, the more appear to take their places. The more fighting is done, the more there is to do. Part of the reason is that this is unlike the wars we studied in history class; this isn’t about capturing territory from the enemy—we’ve already got the whole country. We can’t control it and have no idea what to do with it, but we’ve got it.
Though the Bush administration has resisted a concrete timetable for troop withdrawal, it has highlighted a series of benchmarks in its rhetoric since the war began. Each of the touted benchmarks has been reached, with none of the promised improvements following. Saddam has been captured, tried and executed; control of the Iraqi government has been handed over from the military occupiers to the Iraqis; elections have come and gone. Our troops have not been greeted as liberators, and according to Dick Cheney the insurgence has been in its “last throes” for almost two years.
What does winning in Iraq even mean? In its National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, the White House defines winning as a three-stage process. In the short term, Iraq is to begin fighting terrorists, holding elections and rebuilding its economy; in the medium term, Iraq is to have a strong constitutional government in place and be “in the lead fighting terrorists and insurgents and providing its own security”; in the long term, Iraq is to be a peaceful, united, democratic, secure nation free of terrorists and insurgents that serves as a gleaming beacon to carry the republican ideal to the rest of the middle east.[1]
That strategy was released over 16 months ago. Whether Iraq has even reached the medium term stage is arguable, three years and ten months after the end of “major combat operations.”[2]
We can’t break even. From this vantage point, the above definition of victory sounds optimistic to the point of naiveté. The situation Iraqis are faced with now is even worse than most of them had it under Saddam Hussein. And life under Saddam was no picnic: Kurds and Shiite Muslims were brutally subjugated, tens of thousands were murdered, and international relief shipments of food and medicine meant for the suffering people of Iraq were diverted to government warehouses.[3] How can things possibly be worse now?
According to a survey released by the United Nations in May 2005, many Iraqis have health care inferior to that available under Saddam. The water is filthier, the electrical grid is unstable, and the literacy rate—especially for women—is stagnate.[4] Oh yes, and the constant kidnappings, torture and terrorism. The most recent suicide bombing, outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, killed four and injured thirty.
Saddam was a vicious dictator and mass-murderer, but the chaos we triggered in removing him from power has been more dangerous to the Iraqis than he was. In place of a brutal and oppressive government, there is now a wobbly regime largely powerless to combat constant assaults on the people from private militias, terrorist groups, even its own soldiers and police.[5] Scaling the violence back to Saddam-era levels would be an improvement, but even that seems Quixotic.
We can’t quit. This one’s the real killer. The situation in Iraq is appalling—terrible for us and terrible for the innocent Iraqis who are stuck living with it. But at this point, what can we do about it? Coalition troops and the Iraqi Security Forces are doing the best they can against an endless and fearless enemy. It’s tempting to agree with those who have been calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. That’s a position that’s hard to argue against—over 3,000 American troops have already been killed for absolutely nothing; what possible reason could there be to allow even more to die?
But what happens after we go? It was we, afterall, who instigated the war. Saddam Hussein, evil brute that he was, never attacked us, never threatened to attack us, and never helped anyone else attack us. Supporters of the war point out that the invasion was nonetheless legal and justified, since Saddam’s expulsion of U.N. weapons inspectors violated the ceasefire signed after the Gulf War in 1991; after four years of blood-soaked anarchy, that strikes me as a pitiful justification. If we leave now, do we abandon the Iraqis to this nightmare we created? Is that the act of a just nation? No. Neither was starting the war in the first place, but we can’t undo that one.
So what is the answer? How do we win, bring peace to Iraq and withdraw with a little of the honor and class that was missing when we went in? I admit that I have no clue, which, sadly for everyone over there killing and getting killed, puts me ahead of the people in charge.