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War or Occupation?
Eclectics Anonymous has quite an interesting post up about the war in Iraq.
Well, war?
If you want to extract America from the failed neo-con experiment in the Middle East, there is something very simple. You can do it today, tomorrow, until the boys and girls come home: stop calling it a war!
The ‘war’ in Iraq simply wasn’t. What started as an invasion quickly changed into a messed-up mop-up, a wrecked reconstruction and finally morphed into a moral morass best termed occupation.
Be sure to read the whole post.
To a degree I consider this to be a rhetorical trick, on the other hand there is also (quite) some truth to it.
What do you think? Should we call it ‘the war in Iraq’, the ‘occupation of Iraq’, or couldn’t you care less?
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15 Responses to “War or Occupation?”
This is the rhetorical equivalent of masturbation.
Would the death of Army Sgt. Randy J. Matheny be any less tragic if he perished in a “post-invasion occupation” and not a “war”?
Does it matter that the armed conflict that took his life does not fit the Webster’s definition of a war?
What do you think his mother and the citizens of his hometown would say about that?
I believe he is quite correct. We are now an occupying power attempting to deal wit both an insurrection and a civil war. We won the war but are now losing, or better yet, have already lost the peace. We have a decision to make: we can either resign ourselves to occupying Iraq for the next 10 to 20 years(an spend a enormous amount of money doing it) or we can cease occupying Iraq. I don’t think there are too many people willing to continue on occupying Iraq for that length of time.
We won the war now lets go home!!!
Wars are declared by Congress. This was never a war. It was a resource grab that went horribly amiss.
So in every technical term, it is not a war.
On the other hand, the fighting is as serious as anything that happened in Normandy in 44. I agree with Shaun in the post above about what it looks from the troops point of view.
So this is the mess that gets left when a lazy ass Congress doesn’t do its job, and hands its power to a bunch of stupid wild eyed cowboys.
There was a reason why the forefathers did what they did, and its time to get back to that.
Shaun,
I’m not looking back. I’m not trying to re-justify or un-justify a war. What is done is done. I am trying to look forward.
Whole point I am trying to make can be summed up in sootytern’s comment:
“We won the war now lets go home!”
No we haven’t won. There is nothing left to win.
The major American military presence needs to end. We need to get out. Good or bad – it will eventually happen. By calling it a war we force people to think in terms of winning and losing. By calling it an occupation, people start thinking more about bringing it to an end.
ALL the deaths in Iraq are tragic: the deaths of the soldiers from America, England, Italy and so on; the deaths among the private contractors, both the mercenaries and the drivers, building contractors, etc; the deaths of the vollenteers in the NGOs; the deaths in the Iraqi population, civilian, the former Iraqi military (many just conscripts) and the insurgents fighting not against some American democratic ideal but to get the American Army out of Iraq because his brother has been arrested and his sister blown to bits.
All the deaths are tragic – count them as you will. But the issue is looking beyond next week, beyond next month. The issue is changing the mindset of Americans and others. And whether the deaths were justified or not, we need to stop trying to control the uncontrollable.
The issue is about trying not to ‘win’ but to solve the problem.
An American win shouldn’t be a precondition for leaving anymore.
blc303:
Your comments play well to my post earlier today on the MSM’s failure to really dig into what was going on in Iraq until it was too late. There never was an effort to frame the debate because there wasn’t a debate of any consequence or duration. The default position, of course, was the administrations, which was “this is a war” and “victory” is the goal.
Changing the language to more closely resemble the reality is fine, but it’s an academic exercise and not a problem solver.
There is a fundamental difference between solving a problem and defining the problem.
Unfortunately if the solution is defined by “winning” then we do indeed have a problem. If the question is phrased differently, allowing people not only to think in terms of winning or losing, the different solutions can present themselves.
I agree that the phrasing is, in a sense, academic. But framing things, how language effects your perception of an issue, is not.
I am trying to get people to finally mentally redefine what is going on in Iraq. By doing that you start to realize that winning isn’t as important as the politicians would like.
Think of children – children playing a game or children playing together: does one of those imply a winner?
You seem to want to solve the problem, I want to redefine the problem to allow a solution.
Unfortunately, calling it an occupation will not generate enough enthusiasm by a large portion of the electorate or the political elite to bring our troops home. If you call it a war, it is true American’s will want to end it only if we “win”. If you call it an occupation American’s will want to end it only when Iraqis “bend to our will”. Whether Iraq is a war or occupation Americans have the same attitude as Israelis toward the Palestinians – we’re not moving until you do what we tell you and become “good little boys and girls” as we define it. While we may reduce and reposition our troops in Iraq to cut down on casualties, we will keep 20,000 to 30,000 troops on the 4 super bases for the next 20-30 years regardless on Democratic or Republican Administrations or the Iraqi government’s desires.
You can call it the Bush Doctrine or whatever you want but Murtha, Clinton, McCain or whomever will want a sizeable troop presence in the mideast to compliment our Air Base in Qatar and our Naval base in Bahrain. The political elite have decided we need to control the Mideast both to protect Israel and Saudia Arabia but also the free flow of oil. To that end a sizeable ground presence in the region is a must.
While I oppose this idea strongly, I don’t see anyone on the political horizon to seriously challange this concept. Don’t be surprised if during the next 30 years we have several military conflicts in the Mideast in order to protect Western interests. I can forsee uprisings in Saudia Arabia and Bahrain which could lead to our intervention and occupation and a partial occupation of Iranian oil fields. Lebanon and Syria could also be targets. Until we jettison our belief of our supreme importance in the World and our belief we have the right to do anything we want to anyone else, we will be embroiled militarily for many, many, many decades.
blc303:
There was a semantic kerfuffle over Vietnam that did get some traction.
Many war supporters in Washington insisted on calling it a “police conflict” and other euphemisms, but an increasingly unhappy public saw it for what it was — a war.
You can call what has occured since the invasion phase of the Iraq thingie anything you want, but an increasingly unhappy public is seeing it for what it is — a war.
As jledell alludes to, “occupation” is not going to float very many boats. This is because the two major occupations in recent U.S. history — Germany and Japan — followed wars that ended with peace treaties and clear understandings of what the subsequent occupations entailed, the responsibilities of the occupiers and the occupied, and more or less fixed end dates.
In large part because of the ignorance and hubris of the Bush administration, the terms of the Iraqi occupation were maddenly vague from the outset and, unlike Germany and Japan, there has been an active insurgency and now a civil war — another term that may not fit Webster’s definition to a T, but works well enough for most people.
There are people who have spoken out passionately against thie concept, but neither the media nor the blogosphere is giving them the time of day.
Republican Congressman Ron Paul is running for president and opposes both the Iraq War and permanent bases in the Middle East.
Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich is running for president and opposes both the Iraq War and permanent bases in the Middle East.
Libertarians Steve Kubby, George Phillies, and Christine Smith all oppose the Iraq War and permanent bases in the Middle East.
There are people who are speaking out against our foreign policy and proposing bold alternatives. It’s just that people in the media, the blogosphere, and even here at TMV simply ignore these people. Virtually every day, we hear a story about Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Giuliani, Romney, or McCain. Non-establishment candidates with bold ideas need not apply.
Back in 2004, Democrats had an opportunity to voice their opposition against the war. Instead, they nominated John Kerry, who voted for the war resolution and refused to renounce his vote prior to the general election.
If Democrats end up with another presidential candidate whose opposition to the war is ambiguous, they will have no one to blame but themselves.
There have actually been three phases of the “war” in Iraq.
First was really war – the invasion itself and toppling of Saddam’s regime.
Second was the occupation phase, which lasted until the Iraqi government was elected and internationally recognized.
Third is where we are today – which boils down to providing assistance to the recognized government of Iraq in quelling insurgency.
Each phase is legally distinct. Take Germany as an analogy – we were at war until Germany was defeated. Then we were an occupying power until the formation of the German government in 1949. Ever since we’ve not been “occupiers” in any legal sense.
Of course it’s an occupation now rather than a war.
> If you call it an occupation
> American’s will want to end
> it only when Iraqis “bend to
> our will�.
That’s not what’s happening. Many want our troops out yesterday. The rest hope that some pacification can be achieved (which is what we wanted all along) and modern development for Iraq, but we know that’s not going to happen so long as it’s resisted by not only Iraqis but by foreign terrorists. The “winning the peace” (pacifying and reconstructing Iraq during the post-war occupation that is years old now) just wasn’t achieved, nor well planned for. That is the likely basis of the large anti-GOP vote in 2006 as well as what will get Hillary Clinton likely elected in 2008.
Calling our occupation of Iraq a war is just as reflexive as referring to our department of war as the Department of Defense. And yes, it does paint perceptions and it does change how people approach the problem.
Anyway you look at it, its a mess, dint the people in
Washington make any contingency plans for this scenario,
the French and the Germans dint want any part of this
invasion, if they pull out now thay will have replaced Sadam
with Aqaeda.
No if we pull out now we will replace Saddam with Al Sadr. And another Shia state is born with Caliphate on their minds.
> No if we pull out now we will
> replace Saddam with Al Sadr.
We will aid Iran’s replacement, certainly.
> And another Shia state is born
> with Caliphate on their minds.
It would then face attack by Sunni states with their own Caliphate on their minds. Iran would support the Shia government in the south of Iraq against the Sunnis in the central part of the nation, which would be aided by the Saudis.
If we leave now, things will get worse. If we leave later, things will get worse, though hopefully not as bad as if we were to leave now. Either way things will get worse.