For a long time, it seems like what I was consistently reading on a number of political websites I frequent were variations on the theme: "We're Winning in Iraq!". Usually this title was followed by some piece about how we'd secured some village or other, or built a school, or held elections or conducted a poll among handpicked Iraqis who just LOVED us...
Well, it's been a long time since I saw one of those.
Lately what I've seen posted by the same idiots are variations on the theme: "The Democrats want us to lose!" This is then followed by a piece wherein some prominent (or not so prominent) Democrat takes the position that we should "redeploy" or "withdraw" or otherwise disengage from Irag "before the job is done."
The consistent theme is that Democrats don't have the stomach for a difficult fight, or don't support the "mission" (whatever that oddly chimerical term defines on a particular day).
Sadly, I think that too many Democrats actually do support the "mission", they just think we could do it better or more effectively or in a nicer, more understanding "Democrat" sort of way.
Well, I've come from a position similar to that (ie- we could have done this better) to the realization that we have no business over there at all. The invasion of Iraq was illegal, first of all, and that's been made clear by so many folks that it hardly bears repeating. Not only did we have no business invading them in 2003; we had no business bombing them in the 10 years prior or attacking them originally in the first Gulf War.
There is no "better way" to dictate to a foreign people what kind of government they should have or how they should run their business. Saddam Hussein was a Frankenstein, maybe. But if so, he was a Frankenstein of our own creation. Memories forget that he was originally our puppet, the man our CIA supported to become the "scary dictator" that he was. Memories forget that he was our foil against Iran, and that in the Iran-Iraq war we supplied him with weapons and sophisticated means by which to assault our other "enemy" in the Middle East.
Memories forget that 9-11, even in its official version, was a product of our own blunders in the Middle East. They don't hate us for our freedoms, they don't hate us for our lifestyle, they don't hate us for our faith or freedom of faith. They hate us because we've been screwing around over there for fifty plus years and treating them like either children who need the firm hand of a wise parent or madmen who need the whip to keep them in line.
We hear now that we can't just "up and leave" because "we broke it, now we have to fix it". Even well-meaning people succumb to this logical fallacy. It is a fallacy because it is based on two faulty premises. The premises are 1) that we CAN fix it, or at least we are in some way better at fixing it than the people over there are; and 2) that by committing the original error of invading in the first place we have a responsibility or obligation to remedy our error by further meddling.
The problem we are encountering is that our "remedies" are causing more problems than they are solving. When we throw money at the Iraqis, it is, quite predictably, skimmed heavily by corrupt individuals before it is distributed and then distributed inequitably in a way that makes us enemies. When we throw bullets at the Iraqis, we invariably do so in a way that discriminates unfairly among the Iraqis and strengthens various factions to the detriment of others, who become our enemies.
We are told that if we leave, chaos will descend (we were told the same thing about Vietnam). But it was our arrival that introduced the chaos in the first place, our presence exascerbates said chaos and our leaving can hardly make things worse. Leaving, or LOSING, as our political rivals suggest redeployment outside of Iraq would constitute, may be the equivalent of losing face. But a loss of face always accompanies an error, whether the error is admitted or not. Leaving is merely an acknowledgement of the fact that we erred in going in the first place.
There is another good reason to leave this war. We cannot afford to fight it. Financially, we can carry on, I suppose, even if our creditors abandon us (although then we'd really start to feel the pinch of this war, wouldn't we?) In terms of the toll on our troops, I suppose that's a value judgment some may disagree with.
But the real price we pay in continuing this foreign adventure is the toll it takes on the American psyche. Already the nation is bitterly divided. Already our freedoms and civil liberties are threatened in a way that hasn't been the case in over a century. That is a price that citizens of an Empire must pay.
But we were not founded to be an Empire or the world's policeman or ruler or dictator or anything else. We were founded to be a place where freedom and individual liberty are paramount. A nation cannot be both a free democracy and a world ruling Empire. The two are inconsistent.
We need to lose this war and not start the next one so that we can remain a free people. Diminished on the world stage? Perhaps, like Great Britain was diminished when it surrendered its colonial empire. But free.
We do not intervene well overseas. We are not good at spreading democracy by arms or by covert action. We've been trying for nearly a century, and what we've created is a world that no longer trusts us and no longer looks to us for leadership, but rather fears us. The current administration has certainly made that fear gel for many, what with extraordinary renditions, prisons with no law, torture openly discussed and practiced and both martial and economic bullying of our rivals and even our erstwhile allies. But other administrations in the past, both Republican and Democratic, have tried and failed to administer our overseas Empire to beneficial effect.
So let us abandon these reckless foreign adventures and focus on restoring and protecting the values we really were founded on. Liberty, respect for each other, fairness to other nations and real justice at home.
And for God's sake let us not spread this madness even further into places like Iran and Syria. We've done harm enough.