VI Day
The war's over! We won! Hurrah for our side--whatever side that happens to be!
At every stage of the Iraq and Afghan wars, when I was asked by an interviewer or talkshow host, what should be done, I always gave the same answer: Declare victory and get out, whether slow and deliberately as I thought best, or just run like frightened rats as we did in Vietnam. Kissinger got the Peace Prize for that act of cowardice and betrayal. It was the finest moment of a splendid career. Kissinger's Metternich used astute diplomacy to save an empire on the ropes, while Kissinger used astute diplomacy to bring the most powerful country in the world to its knees.
When pressed to explain my position, often with some words such as-- "Then wouldn't all these men have died in vain?" --I would always point out that we were going to cut and run one time or another, either now or a year from now. Everyone killed in this war has in fact died "in vain". One can only hope that in doing their duty they will not have lived in vain. The earlier we run, the fewer will have died in vain.
Former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley would disagree. Writing in today's Wall Street Journal, Hadley declared an unequivocal victory. All our major goals have been achieved: "an Iraqi government that would not pursue weapons of mass destruction, invade its neighbors, or oppress its people." If we really were serious about Iraq not having WMD's, perhaps we should not have sold them to Saddam. Invading neighbors, it is true, is on the back burner for a while, but unless Christians don't count, this government is already showing it can outdo the dictator in oppression, and if I were an unarmed Sunni, I'd be looking to buy some guns.
Of course we are not actually pulling out. We are leaving behind 50,000 soldiers, too few to pacify the country but perhaps too many for the merely advisory role they have been allegedly assigned. Perhaps they were to be used for target practice. Whether Mr. Hadley is a cynical lying imperialist or merely a fool, I do not know, but it is terrifying to think that the author of this piece WSJ was once advising a President of the United States.
If we were serious about carving out an actual empire in the Middle East--for our own benefit and not for the benefit of our gallant democratic ally etc etc-- I might, grudgingly, be able to see the point of all this loss of life and waste of money, a waste that is bringing our economy down for a long time. But we are not. The American people does not have the stomach for empire. We can bomb some poor devils to hell and blow their country up and set off civil wars. But what we cannot and will not do is to impose a Pax Americana on the Middle East. We won't even do it in Mexico and Central America.
Since we won't fish, we have to cut bait. But let us have no more of Mr. Hadley's lies about the the Iraqization of the war. In fact, Iraq is already being Vietnamized, that is, it is being taken over by its most violent elements. There is only one dilemma: the Norwegians have already given the African messiah a Nobel Peace Prize for continuing the wars. Can they really award him a second one for abandoning the poor Iraqis to their fate?
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Now that the Iraq War is over, I think it's time to confront those who said this war was for oil.
Iraq's government has given the lion's share of its oil to Norwegian government, the Malaysian government, and the multinationals Total and BP from France and Britain respectively. A Dutch and an Angolan company won whatever was left in the second round.
America did not fight this war for oil. It fought it for ideology. The ideology of using military force to spread human rights and democracy across the world and weld it in its own image. A failed and dangerous ideology that must remain as dead as Soviet communism.
TJF: "The American people does not have the stomach for empire. We can bomb some poor devils to hell and blow their country up and set off civil wars. But what we cannot and will not do is to impose a Pax Americana on the Middle East. We won’t even do it in Mexico and Central America."
Excellent piece. Although real empires at some point become bankrupt - they reach a point of over-stretch - at least early on they reaped some profit for the ruling country. Has the "American empire" ever been anything but an ideological outpouring of money? With Obama at the helm, expect more outpouring -- not only national building (Darfur next?) but all types of humanitarian aid. The U.S. gov. recently allocated millions of dollars of stimulus money --- for outsourcing training centers in Sri Lanka, to help the locals! This is the "American empire."
An excellent piece.
TJF writes,"We can bomb some poor devils to hell and blow their country up and set off civil wars. But what we cannot and will not do is to impose a Pax Americana on the Middle East."
The reason Hadley and those neo-con fellows are shouting "Mission Accomplished" for the WSJ, is because now that some of our divisions in Iraq have been freed up, we can move them into Afghanistan and Iran/Persia where we can "bomb those poor devils to hell and blow their country up and send it back to third world status as we did to Iraq."Keep them crippled" is the goal, not Pax Americana.
When was ever Afghanistan NOT a third world state, Robert? It's been ruled by tribes and warlords and ritual-rape since Alexander the Great had to make a hasty exit due to some pressing problem in the Middle East. His ruthless ways earned him demigod status there though in an age that wasn't overly concerned with rules of engagement.
Personally, I think our take on our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan needs some rethinking. Or maybe some oldthinking. The Brits of yesteryear would have described either one as a "nice little war", id est, one with low casualties, a chance to train up a generation of troops and officers, try out new weapons and tactics and generally control a rambunctious populace and government that hasn't yet learned its place in the world. Of course you have to monitor it closely or your "nice little war" risks escalating into a Vietnam or world war but the concept itself is sturdy and sound.
An astute observation indeed! Reading Mr. Hadley's magniloquent agitprop over breakfast soured that meal but Dr. Fleming has placed it in the proper context for us. As for discerning "whether Mr. Hadley is a cynical lying imperialist or merely a fool," I don't know for certain either but I'm guessing Vegas oddsmakers would opt for the former.
I believe Robert @ 4 is correct in saying this piece in the WSJ is simply another note in the orchestration of a move into Iran, a frightening thought for any sane people.
Rafferty writes: "When was ever Afghanistan NOT a third world state, Robert? "
Yes, I was speaking of Iraq and Iran.
"The Brits of yesteryear would have described either one as a “nice little war”, id est, one with low casualties, a chance to train up a generation of troops and officers, try out new weapons and tactics and generally control a rambunctious populace and government that hasn’t yet learned its place in the world. "
As Evelyn Waugh might have said, "This is that peculiarly, arrogant Brit thinking that reduced a once healthy island empire to the multi-cultural snake pit she has become today."
We still have 50 thousand entrenched troops in Iraq. McCain said we may be there for 50 years. There is a billion dollar fortified embassy in Bagdad, that is going to be used for a long time. The 150,000 third world contractors that remain in Iraq are going to be paid by the the USA taxpayers for a long time. Name one place we have gone into in the last 70 years that we have totally left? I know there must be some but my brain can't think of any at the present time.
"Name one place we have gone into in the last 70 years that we have totally left?"
Our history, our culture, our marriages, families and people. Other than those things, we have held onto everything else -- ideology, party politics, evening news, our military and fast food.
"Name one place we have gone into in the last 70 years that we have totally left? "
Granada?
Some valid points perhaps, Robert, but the author of Vile Bodies, The Loved One and even Brideshead Revisited would never have written anything as starkly unfunny as that. Waugh was a Catholic apologist who always gave his best and funniest lines to the devil.
MR. Rafferty,
"Waugh was a Catholic apologist who always gave his best and funniest lines to the devil."
Come now Mr. Rafferty, I know a devil's advocate when I see one.
Well said, Dr. Fleming.
The older I get and the more I understand how the world works the more depressed I become. That misfits, maniacs, and imbeciles are installed in important security offices and given Nobel prizes says it all. Better were the days when I only cared to rush home from school and play outside with the boys. At least when one of us threw a punch it was after more thoughtful consideration than any national security advisor in recent memory has given to decisions on the use of violence. Not that I'm in line for one, but after they have given the Nobel to Kissinger, Obama, Athassari, etc I wouldn't be able to find more use for one than to use as a door jam in my cellar. Maybe one of the current lunatics in DC will get a peace prize if nuclear missiles start flying over Persia?
There are a lot of similarities of these wars with Nam, but many differences, too. After the U.S. left, there was a reign of terror for many years. But the regime eventually liberalized, economically and in other ways. A priest I know was tortured by the North Vietnamese goons after they took over the South in 1975. He recently returned for a month, fearing they might put him in a cage again, even though he's now an American citizen. He found a great problem in Hanoi: The Catholic seminary is too small for its 250 seminarians, and it has to turn away dozens more novices. He was treated well everywhere.
Of course, there are problems. The Church is struggling to get back property Ho Chi Minh stole. And the Communist Party still runs the place through brutality and corruption.
When we leave, none of that will ever happen in Iraq of Afghanistan.
Sorry, one more post. All our major goals have been achieved, Hadley wrote, “an Iraqi government that would not pursue weapons of mass destruction, invade its neighbors, or oppress its people."
But before the invasion Sadddam's regime had given up pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, as some of us said back then, and as we all know now. Saddam's army was incapable of invading another country. And most Iraqis are much more oppressed than they were under Saddam, not to mention the couple hundred thousand killed by Bush.
The Christian minority, which survived 1,400 of Muslim rule, couldn't survive even a couple of years of rule by their brother Christians in America, beginning with "Born Again" Bush.
Hadley is just another Bush liar. He and the others should be brought up on war-crimes charges.
"Whether Mr. Hadley is a cynical lying imperialist or merely a fool, I do not know..."
Of course Mr. Hadley is a garden variety Beltway think tank toad, attempting in the main to keep secure his place in the garden. He is not a writer. A glance at the bloodless think tank gobblygook he means as a victory jig in yesterday's WSJ establishes that. The piece amounts to a cut and paste job from 8 years or more of self delusion. Should one have presented eight years ago this fiasco to a room full of morons as it turned out to be, not a single moron would have nodded assent. And now Mr. Hadley is looking for applause for a misbegotten job of bad work become a millstone. Less than a toad, a worse than senseless thing.
"Lets turn the page" says the former neighborhood organizer and Bill Ayers acolyte. Oh, all right, so we'll STILL have 50 thousand troops in Iraq thru the rest of this year and into 2011 but, after all, they're just there for support and counterterrorism training. The war's over, eh?
The basic problem is that America no longer has an effective sense of itself as a country. A real country acts according to its real interests. But America is merely a machine that is controlled by elements pursuing their own interests. There is no cure except to break up this monstrosity called the United States, which is a threat to the American people and to the civilised world.
Dr. Wilson-The attempt to peacefully partition the country was thrown to Republican wolves 150 years ago as you well know. The cure is to break up the U.S. monster, but the various element won't let it happen without deep strife. They need South to pay the taxes,their young to fight the wars, and a political scape.
political scape goat
Well said Mr. Flemming!
I won't be popular with many, but I never agreed with Dubya's invasion of Iraq. Bad chess move.
IMHO, this has been the Balkanization of Iraq, where its neighbor, IRAN, is clearly the winner.
As usual, Iran strategically used their proxy's to gain ground out of complete chaos [Lebanon is another example]. Although Iran won't literally raise a flag there, Iraq is now theirs. Their power covertly builds. Sunni order is declining. House of Saud is nervous and they will do everything they can to use and abuse the lives of our men because they are incapable of winning a war on their own. The entire political landscape runs so much deeper that no "comment post" can simplify.
The Iranian empire is a cancer that has metastasized the solar plexus of oil rich mid-east while distracting the mainstream with nuclear warheads and rhetoric talk. Historically speaking, an "Arabic" country [Iraq] has been, in essence, annexed by Persia.
Checkmate . . .
Dr. Fleming writes:
"Perhaps they [the 50,000 soldiers we are leaving behind] were to be used for target practice."
Why oh why, in a country of 350 million, can we not field one candidate for public office capable of such delicious, and deadly, wit? He would not win, of course, but how good it would be to go to the polls and cast a useless vote anyway, just for the pleasure of associating one's name with his.
The delicious part of the above quote is obvious, but what is deadly is that this is probably just what will happen to these hapless souls; they will be used as targets in training attacks for the various factions to prepare for the final shakeout between the pro and anti-Iran, and the Shia, Sunni and Kurd forces.
I am a junior Captain with a combat arms unit, currently deployed to Afghanistan. For the past 6 months I have participated in the vicious fighting around Kandahar, and seen the early effects of the supposed "surge" into the Taliban heartland.
I have spent much of my time outside the wire and seen most of the surrounding region. My experience has left me incredibly dismayed with the overall US strategy and I have no hope that "victory" as it is normally constituted can be achieved here. Afghanistan is indescribably barren and backwards, and the populace lives in a state of squalor that would be incomprehensible to most Americans. There is no centralised government, no basic services, and most of the locals live existences of hardscrabble poverty, trying to eke a living out of the dust. It shocks me to think that bureaucrats in Washington believe that we can impose democracy on such an alien land and people. Most of the civilians here have no contact with people 5 km down the road, and hold the corrupt central government in contempt. Our lame attempts to buy off the populace are doomed to fail as most simply, in my opinion, wish to be left alone. If we really cared about the plight of the Afghans we would leave the country immediately, as our presence here only incites further violence and the civilians end up caught in the crossfire.
If the Afghans truly value freedom and liberal values, as FOX news would have you believe, then they can fight the Taliban themselves. This War is a battle of will and longevity, and we do not have the resources or staying power to see it through. Our leaders should look to the example of the Soviets, who in the 1980's waged a ruthless campaign against the populace, bulldozing Kandahar city, killing indiscriminately and driving the rural population into the cities. They still left 10 years later with their tails between their legs. Our feeble "COIN" strategy, predicated upon protecting civilians at all costs, not only puts our troops in danger (I have seen this with my own eyes) but earns us no respect nor admiration from the people, who quite naturally view us as interlopers and cease cooperating once our foot patrols and helicopters leave their hamlets.
Bring the troops home from these Middle Eastern backwaters. Put them on the borders to protect our own country from the illegal invasion which will destroy what remains of our culture and society.
Finally, I must admit that in some ways I sympathize with the attitude of the Afghan populace. Our own culture is so degraded, alien, and subversive that I am not surprised how vehemently they oppose its imposition on their families and way of life. If democracy means pop culture, feminism, and abortion on demand then they are right to resist us.
If we leave Afghanistan tomorrow, absolutely nothing will change. The country will revert to its usual state of dysfunctional tribal decrepitude. I have seen too many young soldiers, kids from the wrong side of the tracks, die for nothing here. Let the Neocons send their children to fight these wars; maybe then they would realize the folly of our imperial adventurism.
Please remember the troops in your prayers, and wish them all a safe and speedy return.
I agree with you AWLC. After the initial invasion, a good portion of the Afghan population actually wanted their old King put back on the throne as it was the last time Afghanistan was somewhat stable. But the bureaucrats in Washington wanted a social democratic state instead, and today we have the mess you're caught up in.
Really a return to such a situation is the best option for them. They will mostly stick to their tribal rule outside of the area of the King's personal rule in the capital, even if they are living in poverty. Its the fallacy of egalitarianism, the idea that we can make them into little Americans.
#24. And the fallacy that any people with any pride would want to be today's American.
"Hoorah for our side" was first chanted by the crowds of Coventry as Lady Godiva rode through the city's streets sidesaddle to protest some offense or outrage.