Inevitably, when you're arguing with people who support the war, there comes a point where they say, "Oh Yeah? Well, what would
you do?"
What I usually say is, "When your're in a car being driven by a drunk, the first thing you gotta do is take the wheel away from the drunk. You don't need to offer a Five Point Plan to justify not driving off a cliff."
But if you want to argue policy...
...there's a great new book by
Robert Pape called "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism." Pape is an associate professor at the University of Chicago. He has collected data about suicide bombings worldwide since 1980 - and
the evidence shows that the specific tactic of suicide bombing is almost always a response by native populations to occupations of their land. Religious fundamentalism is
not a key to suicide bombings. The presence of foreign troops is the common denominator in suicide bombings, from the Tamil Tigers to Palestine to Northern Ireland to Iraq. So, if we want suicide bombings to stop in Iraq, the first thing to do is get our troops out of there.
The presence of foreign troops on the Arabian Peninsula has been Al Qaeda's main recruiting tool. Bin Laden predicted that we would occupy Iraq, too - and we have added to his credibility by fulfilling his prophecy. Pape says we could defend our interests in the Middle East (oil) quite easily with a floating presence of aircraft carriers off the coast without having a single boot on the ground. He says, in fact, that we already have such a presence, since we have withdrawn our troops from Saudi Arabia. Again: if we want to stop suicide bombings in Iraq, the thing to do is get our troops out of there.
Pape is neither a liberal nor a conservative. But, since he is from the University of Chicago, he should carry some weight with the neocons. They will not want to hear his message, but if they want to get out of the mess they've made (and preserve their precious careers), they will probably find a way to
quietly follow Pape's advice. The pullout will, of course, be couched in the language of victory. But since that's the only thing we can do, we might as well do it now and get on with it. Why should more innocent people die just to save face for George Bush and a bunch of neocon academics who based their actions on ideology and wishful thinking?
A fascinating interview with professor Pape can be heard on "Worldview" with Jerome McDonnell on WBEZ radio in Chicago. Here's the link:
http://www.wbez.org/audio_library/wv_rajun05.asp#23
Now you don't have to make stuff up when people challenge you to come up with an alternative to Bush's mess. There's empirical proof that the answer is pulling our troops out. I still don't think it's our responsibility to clean up Georgie Boy's crimes - but eventually we are going to get control of our country back and the world will expect us to do more than just apologize. Professor Pape offers a way to get the discussion going in a way that is rational - and most likely to acheive the results we'd most prefer.