This was originally composed as a reply to HenryVane's great diary "Pacifism - Not a Candidate Diary." I felt that it didn't belong there as it didn't really follow the debate there. I just watched Charlie Wilson's War the other night (I don't get to the theatre much), and a good part of the debate over the movie has centered around dollar figures; he could get a billion dollars for weapons but only was aiming for a million in reconstruction.
The card at the end of the movie was the take-home message of Charlie Wilson's War: "These things really happened. We changed the world, then we fucked up the end game."
It wasn't that he couldn't get a million dollars for reconstruction after spending a billion for weapons, it was that he couldn't get any money.
Our ignoring the situation of a war-ravaged country with no infrastructure was only made worse by the fact that they were now a war-ravaged country with no infrastructure and weapons designed to take down the Soviets and the training to use them.
Think of the things you could be convinced of when you were 14. I myself was a subscriber to the Limbaugh Letter, listened to his radio show at lunch in school, and so on and so forth. Half of the country was under 14, and the only people standing up to lead were radicals, and the moderate voices were drowned out.
This movie wasn't just about Afghanistan. It's about US foreign policy since the 1950s. Everything we touch, even if we do great things, turns to crap. Overthrowing Mossadeq in Iran, installing Saddam in Iraq, supporting the Saudi royal family, giving a billion in weapons and not a dime in reconstruction in Afghanistan.
And that last paragraph is the source of both my desire and my hesitation for withdrawing from Iraq: what monsters will we create if we leave the country like it is now, and what more monsters will we create if we stay?
The only example we have of successfully rebuilding a country after the devastation of war is the Marshall Plan. My father, a retired Air Force colonel, reminds me several times a week that we still have troops in Germany and Japan, so why shouldn't we have them in Iraq. At least he understands that what we have going now is not a war, but an occupation.
The obvious retort here is "They weren't shooting at us in Germany and Japan after the war." Unfortunately, my father is real old-school military brass, and is calling for escalation until there's no one left to oppose us, so there's not really much wiggle room for argument there.
The problem we face with a Marshall Plan in Iraq is that we've spent ourselves dry here. Will the Iraqi population understand that most of America wanted to help them, but couldn't because we ran out of money killing them? If Afghanistan is any clue, they won't. The population didn't care that these weapons were given to them by America to help them repel a massacring army, and Iraq won't care that we've gotten rid of Hussein if we can't prove to them that we're any better.
So again, as we have countless times in the brief history of American involvement in the Middle East, we've painted ourselves in a corner. This one is likely to hurt way more than any of the others, as our involvement is direct and monstrous.
So what can we do? I think it would take several lifetimes to figure out a foolproof plan to reclaim our national honor, repair Iraq, and exit in a way that doesn't leave us reaping our reward in more American blood in the coming decades. But I have a few ideas.
Step 1: Dial the military presence down. Get rid of contractors with guns.
Step 2: Make the rule of law apply to everyone. The fact that American companies are immune from prosecution gives all of us a black eye. Start with the extradition and public trial in an Iraqi court of people guilty of crimes that received no punishment, just reassignment.
Step 3: Build stuff. Build factories, schools, roads. Build the things Iraq needs to become a first-world nation. Don't cut corners. There's no reason why Baghdad should ever be without power, and people who have jobs don't tend to blow themselves up in public places.
We're attempting to fight a war on their turf, in a manner which we cannot win. The disaster it's been so far is nothing compared to what it will be if we continue fucking up the end game.