[Previously posted at Grok Your World by David Caploe.]
Ever since the Cindy Sheehan vigil in Crawford, I’ve been disturbed by what seemed to me then – and increasingly so since – a “bring them home” stance on Iraq that is problematic in terms of BOTH the structural situation in the Middle East AND the likely political fall-out here …
the latter concern made all the more pressing in recent days by the ridiculously easy way the House GOP once again managed to manipulate the Dems with their “immediate withdrawal from Iraq” stunt.
Perhaps the best way to understand this approach is to begin with a brief comparison of Iraq and Vietnam, which have both radical similarities and major differences.
The biggest similarity is that these were both “wars of choice” – that is, the US was never attacked by either Iraq or Vietnam, but US politicians – for different, albeit equally fucked up, reasons – decided to commit huge resources of money / blood / time / emotion for conflicts that never had any need to exist in the first place.
But there is one big difference between them: As many of us argued at the time, Vietnam was more or less irrelevant to what was happening at that time – despite an overwhelming Cold War mentality that made Vietnam SEEM like it was, in the rhetoric of the day, “a crucial anti-communist battleground.”
For more on how this classification / transformation of Vietnam in US eyes happened, see the Lévi-Strauss section of the Theory series, especially Lectures 10 and 11 …
However it happened, though, the fact was that Vietnam never was crucial to the US in either strategic or ideological terms … except when they made it so, which is another similarity to the current mess in Iraq.
The big difference, tho, is that the entire SE Asian / Indo-Chinese region – where Vietnam was located – was also more or less irrelevant to what was happening in the world …
This is crucial, because when Vietnam DID fall – and the “domino theory” did more or less occur in Laos and Cambodia, altho not Thailand or Burma – it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to anyone outside of southeast Asia …
Which is one reason these morons came to think that even if idiot interventions don’t work out, it won’t really matter anyway, so there's no downside to an unprovoked invasion … just like they thought, as “Dick” Cheney chugged, “deficits don’t matter … Reagan proved that” … douche bags …
Unfortunately for the US, while Iraq was always irrelevant to the main action – political Islam – the part of the world in which it was located, namely the Middle East, is a major scene of this struggle …
and so whatever fallout happens from Bush’s Iraq fiasco, it’s going to have a huge impact on not just Iraq, but every other country, as well as regional stability itself, in the Middle East … as well as on the whole global balance in which the Middle East is a crucial center of action …
Put somewhat differently, “bring them home” might have been a perfectly appropriate demand for Vietnam, since the US was more or less willing to clear out of the whole SouthEast region if / when their pointless war effort there collapsed …
However, the Middle East is not a region from which the US can run away … ever… so what happens in Iraq is going to remain crucial to the US and Europe and the rest of the world for the foreseeable future … decades, if not centuries …
Which means two things:
1) Given the enduring importance of the region, the US should never have gotten itself involved in a militarily unwinnable war that is not only de-stabilizing Iraq –
which, for all its tyranny under Saddam, was never a home to political Islam, which is the real concern here … or would be, if Bush were not a traitor who destroys US interests for the sake of pleasing his moronic Christian right mass base …
which, btw, is also true for Syria … another country Bush and his cronies know nothing about, which they are nevertheless set on de-stabilizing as well, apparently not satisfied with the chaos they’ve created in Iraq spreading already to Jordan –
but is de-stabilizing the entire Middle East region … and, btw, not just among the Arabs, but, because of the historic ignoring of Kurdish interests by the post-WWI Sykes-Picot agreement, to Turkey and Iran as well … as if the psychotic Iran of A’jad needs any more prodding from the US …
So while it may make veterans of the anti-Vietnam movement feel good, the whole slogan of “bring them home” is just not on for Iraq …
In fact, as we will argue below, the key to any (almost non-existent) hope a stable post-US Iraq is not to bring the troops home …
But, rather, to completely relieve the US of the political and military direction it has clearly tried and failed to impose on Iraq by forcing the US to hand over political direction to the UN and military direction to NATO … for reasons we’ll discuss shortly …
2) But now having created the Iraq chaos in typically “shoot first, ask questions later” Christian right fashion, the US cannot simply say, “never mind” and walk away …
which, in fact, is just what Bush is hoping to do, and the typically self-destructive Democrats and anti-war movements are handing to him on a silver platter …
because the centrality of the Middle East to global dynamics means we simply cannot leave … especially given the insane chaos that Bush and his equally ignorant pals have unleashed both in Iraq and all over the Middle East – as if that region needed any further de-stabilization in the aftermath of 9/11 …
In equally typical fashion, Bush has created a complete mess – see Karina aftermath – and now someone has got to come in and clean up the insane mess that ignorant assholes have created – and not just for Americans and Iraqis, but also for everyone in the Arab / Muslim world, Europe and, indeed, pretty much the ENTIRE world …
So from the point of view of trying to preserve SOME kind of stability in the region, simply “bringing them home” would make a horrific situation even worse …
But “bring them home” is equally bad from a domestic political point of view … as this latest House fiasco on “leaving Iraq” all too vividly demonstrates …
Let’s recall for just a moment how the right in this country completely twisted and then reversed the “narrative” on what happened in Vietnam …
In the immediate aftermath of the war, the general consensus was that the US should never have been there in the first place … that all the dying and killing were more or less without purpose …
Yet – starting with Reagan, and accelerating down to the present – the dominant “narrative” about Vietnam has become just like Hitler’s line about why Germany lost in World War I … and the comparison is completely intentional:
The politicians got in the way of the generals … they forced the military to fight with “one hand behind its back” … Vietnam was completely winnable, except for the forces at home who “stabbed the soldiers in the back” …
Which, sadly, is the way a lot of high school, and even college, kids understand what happened …
rather than the actual consensus at the time … which was that the whole thing was unwinnable from the word go, which the US should have accepted as soon as they realized it (which was pretty early on), and gotten out ASAP, instead of increasing the US presence with no end in sight …
Now, think about how easy it would be for the insane fucks on the right to use the exact same story line about Iraq …
that it was totally winnable, that Bush wanted to be “resolute” and keep on fighting, but the liberals and Democrats and Michael Moore stabbed him – and the troops – in the back by their cowardly calls to “bring them home” before the job was finished …
And so any mess in the Middle East is not the fault of Bush or the right, who were doing the right thing, but rather the “traitors” who, once again, caused the US to lose a war it could otherwise have easily won …
If you Kos-bags have the slightest doubt that this is exactly what they would say, just look how scared the Democrats were to vote “yes” on a resolution calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq …
which shows not only how cynical the GOP is, but also how pathetic and intimidated by the Republicans the Democrats are …
In this context, the slogan “bring them home” is going to look idiotic and irresponsible in the world at large – which we should care about –
and is also a perfect set-up for the Republicans to avoid responsibility for the chaos they created by blaming it on the always-too-willing-to-please Democrats …
So if Bush’s “stay the course” insanity has clearly failed since at least the “amazing” Iraq elections of late January 2005 – which W and Rummy et al assured us would end the insurgency, instead of ratcheting it up –
and “bring them home” is both irresponsible globally and a perfect domestic set-up for the Republicans at home –
then what is an appropriate stance to take on ending the all-too-predictable madness now going on in Iraq and quickly being exported to previously quiet countries like Jordan ???
The key is to stop focusing on the troops – who really aren’t the issue, given the absence of draft and the fact this is an all-volunteer army –
altho of course the economic conditions that do push people to join the military, especially in order to finance the outrageously overpriced “higher education,” is a separate scandal –
and focus instead on the political leadership that created this fiasco in the first place …
This means a three-point program that offers the best hope for a humane and relatively non-violent aftermath to the almost completely destructive dynamic set off by the American invasion:
1) The US has to apologize to the Iraqi people for creating, and then completely failing to end, previously non-existent conditions in their country of chaos / disorder / lack of electricity and basic services that have made daily life a completely unnecessary battlefield … quite apart from the actual battles the US invasion has unleashed …
This sort of apology is something that is utterly necessary in moving political dynamics forward, not only in Iraq, but in other parts of the Middle East as well, notably Israel / Palestine …
where Israel can state unequivocally that European Jews literally had no other place to go during the 20s and 30s … and that all the work they have done since at least 1917 must stand as a legitimation of their presence there …
while also acknowledging that, however necessary it may have been for them, they also recognize that their coming to Palestine was at the same time, however unintentionally, a disaster – an-naqba – for the Palestinians …
After apologizing to the Iraqis for making daily life much worse than it had been before the invasion, the US must then:
2) Hand over outside direction for the political future of Iraq to the UN – a huge mound of shit for Bush to swallow, which makes it not just pleasant but a necessary acknowledgement by the Republians that their approach has not worked and will never work…
and that continued US domination of the political process there will actually forestall the process of Iraqis making a real effort to make workable relations with each other …
not least because those Iraqis associated with the US have more or less lost their legitimacy among the Arab population, whether Shiite or Sunni …
altho the US, understandably, remains quite popular with the Kurds, altho that could also change on a dime if they are seen as compromising Kurdish autonomy and proto-statehood in the slightest degree …
While some people have suggested the Arab League in this context, the centrality of the Kurdish question makes that a non-starter, as they have also said they reject any mention in the Iraqi “constitution” of Iraq being defined as an “Arab state” … which leaves only the UN …
Now no one here as any illusions about some of the UN’s organizational weaknesses – altho the oil-for-food “scandal” is clearly a pathetic joke fanned by Bolton-ites who are still looking for retrospective justification for this fiasco …
But the UN is the only auspices that has a prayer of working out a mutually agreeable solution … since the US has now totally delegitimated itself as any sort of positive political force in Iraq … and rightly so …
3) And, finally, the US must hand over command of its own and all other foreign military forces to NATO …
US officers will still be in Iraq … but they will not be giving orders to US troops … rather, they will operate as an important – if only because of their numbers and prior experience “in-country” – bulwark of NATO troops … again, taking orders from NATO, and not American, commanders …
The reason is simple: having created this disgusting chaotic situation, the US can’t simply cut and run and leave the mess to others to clean up –
as Bush clearly wants to do, while blaming it on the Democrats, which they seem all too anxious to help him out with –
but has a deep responsibility to stay while more realistic and legitimate – i.e., non-American – political arrangements are worked out … and to provide security where they previously have been unable or willing to do …
The key thing, again, is an acknowledgement – explicit or implicit – that the whole US approach was wrong not just politically, but also militarily …
In this way, the anti-Iraq elements – way too pathetic to call it a “movement” or even “forces” – can put the issue where it belongs:
not on the troops, who are more or less irrelevant, but on the political and military “leaders” who should be forced to bear full and explicit responsibility for creating the huge mess that is Iraq today …
Remember, it’s really not about the troops – it’s about the irresponsible fucks who sent them there …
who need to, finally, acknowledge their failure on every level, and make amends while there still might be something to save …
an approach that is not only right in principle and substance, but will also shift the whole discourse in the US away from “the troops” … and onto the corrupt, no-bid-addicted douche bags who must be forced, at long last, to take responsibility for their outrageous and indefensible actions …
thereby giving the idiot Democrats at least a chance to avoid being stuck with responsibility for the Republicans’ aggressive and ill-considered madness …