The Iraq Study Group issues its recommendations today - and yeah, you already know what they are, since you've heard liberals/Democrats make the same recommendations time and again over the past few years. Steady withdrawal of troops; talking to Iran and Syria (enemies in general, via what used to be called diplomacy). But what's the one recoommendation you won't hear?
Apologize.
The ISG exists solely to save the empire's face, as well as the errant son's. Al Gore yesterday called the invasion of Iraq by Dubya & Co. the worst foreign policy mistake in American history, and he's not alone in that sentiment - military generals, seasoned diplomats, journalists who've been around awhile, they've said the same thing, and not just once or twice. In fact, here at Dailykos, "worst foreign policy mistkake" has been voiced many times by we who are the plain-assed citizens of this wayward republic, and believe it, whether singly or in unison, our voices carry just as much weight as the generals', journalists', etc.
But it occurred to me this morning, listening to NPR as I drove to work, that the heavy breathing on both ends of the ISG line (old-fart issuers; trembling issuees) is proceeding without any moral underpinning, because something's missing from the declarations of what America should and shouldn't do next, and that something's an apology - or, better, a series of apologies, that would go something like this:
- Iraq: America apologizes for invading your country. We should've left your sovereign nation to its own devices. To the many hundreds of thousands who've died premature deaths due to America's grotesque hubris, please accept our humblest apologies.
- Middle East: America had no right trashing your own backyard. As with a neighbor we may bitterly dislike who lives on our street, the legal way, the diplomatic way, the humane way must always be the order of the day. We were immoral and extralegal and rather undiplomatic, and we duly apologize for the instability we've caused. We apologize for our arrogance, and please know we've learned something.
- World: America went too far, post-9/11; we were too full of ourselves, and we processed the deaths of 3,000 of America's citizens as the defining deaths of the age, and they're not, for how can a single American's death be worth more than a single Iraqi's? There is no way, because it's a patently false dichotomy. Americans, like Iraqis and Iranians and Saudis and French and English and Dutch and Chinese and Russians, etc., are worth as much as any human life is worth - and there is no price on a single human life, is there? Ah, but from our actions, you'd think that question did have an answer - Americans are worth more, of course! - but to belabor rhetorical answers is to insult everyone everywhere, and America's been an insult machine for the past three years, hasn't it? Yes, it has. So America apologizes, world, for all that it's done - and please note we're offering this apology on our knees, abjectly, hairshirts donned, flagellating whips at the ready.
Messrs. Baker and Hamilton, as well as the rest of you who make up the ISG, listen close, and take it to heart: you want to truly save America's face, get the pre-Bush respect back, be able to look into the eyes of the world's nations with a level gaze, have people start listening again, expunge the hatred of our fair land? Then make this recommenation #1: "We apologize."
And don't say it's not easy. It's the easiest thing in the world. Ain't nothing easier. I should know - I've done it many times. Saved many friendships that way. Go the way of humility and dignity and grace, ISG...and if snickers and thrown tomatoes follow, know you did the right thing. Again, it ain't easy, but ain't nothing easier.
UPDATE: Thanks, Yellow Canary, for bringing up what I merely implied in my diary, but should've had screamingly front and center: invading Iraq was a crime, a criminal action, and the criminals who instigated the Iraq war/fan its flames to this day simply must be prosecuted. So, apologize, then prosecute, in that order. Gotta happen. Gotta give those gifts to the world.