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Dying For Nothing?
Jules Crittenden published a post at his own blog today, relating to a column he wrote for today’s Boston Herald:
The talk of exit strategies for Iraq has me wondering. Who was the last man to die for what John Kerry called a mistake? Was it that American soldier whose name is the last name on the last panel of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C.? Was it a soldier in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, whichever true believer didn’t strip off his uniform and desert in the end? The last of the 2 million Cambodian men, women and children to die in the Khmer Rouge killing fields in 1979. A Vietnamese boat person, thrown over the side when the pirates of the South China Sea took his money and his wife in the early 1980s? A suicidal, alcoholic or drug-addicted Vietnam veteran some years after that, finally succumbing to despair after his sacrifice and those of his friends had been reviled and rendered meaningless? The last man to die as a result of the decision to abandon Vietnam may not be dead yet.So if we precipitously exit Iraq, who will be the last man, woman or child to die for that mistake? The mistake of abandonment. When, and where, and by whose hands will that person die?
It is a question we have to ask ourselves whenever we are debating about Iraq. As you all know I believe that Bush et alia have lost the war. At least regarding its original goal: a democratic and united Iraq. I do not see that happening any longer. Too many mistakes have been made.
However, that does not automatically mean that the best way from here is a nearly immediate withdrawal.
18 Responses to “Dying For Nothing?”
Look…
I’m sick of this, “if we leave, its going to disentegrate” crap. We as a country are not going to send more troops. We aren’t. We might send 20,000 troops, but whats that going to really do? I mean honestly? In my mind, the only thing it will do, is put 20,000 more troops in the thick of it, and that’s about it. If we don’t put a significant amount of more troops in, and I’m talking about 200,000 to 300,000 more troops in. Enough troops to really pacify the land, and have a smaller troop to population level, then we shouldn’t be there. There is no reason to believe that this administration is going to do anything but half-ass this war, and dump it into the hands of their successors. They are so fucking incomptent and hypocritical in this war, that to believe they are actually going to send enough troops to win this thing, is laughably ridiculous. So…why wait two years watching Iraq disentegrate worse, and watching our troops in the thick of it. Why not just get out of the middle of Iraq now. Send half the troops north to Kurdistan to keep it from bothering Turkey, and half south to Kuwait to protect it from the violence, and then slowly bring these troops back to America. We can’t win this struggle, because there is nothing for us to win. Its not our country, it never was ours. We don’t win anything by staying there longer. If anything the sad thing that this has shown is that America can’t solve every problem anymore. I used to believe we could. But George Bush has done a pretty bad number on this country. I don’t think anybody could say we are better off as a country since he took office. I just hope we as a society can undo the damage of his ineptitude.
uh, precipitously? We were in Vietnam for what? 25 years?
Sometimes there is just no way to leave victorious on any level. That’s why it’s completely critical to avoid wars of choice with so little to gain, avoid fanning the flames of patriotic or religious fervor into a violent direction. And critical to know going in exactly what we want to accomplish, what will trigger our leaving.
The question now is what possible strategy or outcome would make us feel better about leaving? I doubt it is possible now to leave Iraq as stable as it was, and that is to our shame. We have already failed. I don’t believe we can restore order. Hell, we can’t even fix the water, sewer and electricity. In fact, we can’t even get the damn oil flowing like Saddam did. We fckn failed. Not a future prediction. Current fact.
But if you want a thorough and pragmatic view about where we are and how we could proceed, check out this post from Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector.
yeah, i don’t think it was the “precipitous” evacuation that rendered the vietnam veterans “meaningless”. it’s the frame of mind of the country. the attitude with which we deal with it.
times have changed. we don’t have idiots calling soldiers babykillers anymore. we’ve figured out how to “support the troops” and revile the war.
well, most of us. there are still some vapid rightwingnuts that still equate the two…
“precipitous” ???? I echo the above post.
There will always be the “last man to die” in a war. That is the most horrible thing. As for abandoning Vietnam…good grief. This stage of the war is what most resembles Vietnam to me. The soldiers know it’s a bust, everyone knows it’s a bust..but the face saving begins in earnest back home.
I just pray that it doesn’t take 4 years like it did in Vietnam from Nixon’s ’68 campaign promise of “peace with homor”. Tens of thousands of dead troops later and ANOTHER campagin in ’72 for “peace with honor”…we still wound up the same as we were 4 years before.
Meanwhile, our war in Afghanistan continues…I wish, in tears, that we had finished that one first before the headlong ruch into Iraq…
The only thing more cowardly than cutting and running is staying the course when there is no longer a chance of victory. It means we are there so that that little pissant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue doesn’t have to face the reality that his “victory” is as much a pipedream for us as “democracy” is for the Iraqis.
Another thing to remember in this discussion is that we fought the Vietnam war over the theory [Domino] that if Vietnam fell all of southeast Asia would become Communist. The flaw of the theory was that these nations had signed on to international communism dictated by Moscow and had rejected nationalism. Vietnam fell, then had a war with “communist� Pol Pot and then had a second war with “ally� China. Nationalism won out, communism fractured and is on it’s way to disappearing entirely. The idea [theory] in Iraq is that if we leave there will be a regional war generated over the fighting between the three major factions. I have no doubt that there will be fighting but you can make a good argument that the Sunnis, Shiites and to a lesser extent the Kurds will begin to fight internally among each other rather than with each other. You can also make a good argument that nations outside the area will be very hesitant to get involved directly with the fighting after seeing the problems we are having with occupation and quelling the insurgency. I still have to do some research on this for my own education but I am beginning to wonder how a US withdrawal will actually pan out as far as the conflict between the religious and tribal groups. One final note, as far as the US combat deaths and the last person to die, our losses do not even begin to come close to the overwhelming numbers of Iraqis that have died, and unfortunately there will be many many more.
“As you all know I believe that Bush et alia have lost the war. At least regarding its original goal: a democratic and united Iraq.”
The original goal was not a democratic and united Iraq, it was to disarm Saddam Hussein of WMD’s. You are operating on his 4-5 “original goal”, the one created for an election season after the others had been disproven.
Pol Pot did not come to power in Cambodia because we pulled out of Vietnam. Pol Pot came to power because we destablized Cambodia in our effort to root out the Ho Chi Minh trail. By rendering much of the eastern third of Cambodia uninhabitable, Pol Pot stepped in and radicalized the decimated peasantry. The Killing Fields are not the result of us leaving. They are the result of us being there in the first place.
Mikey:
You’re exactly right! If we don’t arrest all the Democratic politicians we might be out of there in 2 or 3 years rather than the 10 or 20 vryone knows it will take. What a waste of our beautiful bases.
To show you how irrational the terrorists lovers are the CIA told the administration that simply because we have no evidence that Iran is about to make a bomb it doesn’t mean that they are about to make a bomb. When as Holly as pointed out that lack of proof shows how fiendishly clever they are! Just as in Iraq. Notice how thy shipped all the WMD off to Syria and Iran and Al Qaida except the huge amounts we found that the MSM refuses to report and the president doesn’t know about because he doesn’t read blogs like you and me.
And yeah if we had withdrawn our troops from Cambodia and had instead marched all the way to the capital the Khmer Rouge would have never taken over. Which is why we need to bomb Iran. Your thinking as always is impeccable.
Because Bush likes to start things and then leave them to disintegrate and make huge messes for others to clean up and then take no responsibility for his actions, he again has done his lifelong pattern of this and now we have a deadly mess for our kids over there.
Bush started an imperial invasion and then neglected it as it deteriorated to the point where there are no solutions. Every idea is a bad one. There are no answers.
Elrod, true and the same destabilization applies to Laos. As you know according to the theory Thailand and Indonesia were next in line for takeover, with all sorts of dire consequences for the free world. Obviously it did not happen, and I now wonder just what the ramifications of the US leaving Iraq will actually be.
Pyst said:
Thanks for pointing that out so I didn’t have to. It’s a very important point to remember when we look back on the Iraq war.
I really believe that if we withdraw quickly, that Iran will step in (openly instead of covertly as they are probably doing now), and completely back the Shites. It could well be the first step of expansionism and a fight in the Muslim world to establish a Caliphate. I believe this would rapidly lead to a crushing defeat of the Iraqi Sunnis, unless Saudi Arabia steps in on their side. Ironically, this really would be a fight against nationalism, but in this case I think there is more evidence that Ahmadijhan is serious about crushing it (based on his speeches). Then the question is, would he succeed? If not it would only be because of escalation of a regional war, if Saudi Arabia and other regional nationalistic powers become involved and defeat him. If not though, and if he were successful, I do think other dominoes would also fall and that the West would then also be endangered. So, either way it looks like a lose-lose proposition. For that reason, I believe that we have to take seriously any proposal that might allow some degree of stability to Iraq. I don’t dispute that we aren’t really going to win this militarily, but I don’t buy the argument that it really can’t get any worse or that our presence there does more harm than good. Currently I think we are holding the sectarian groups at a stalemate. If we leave while that is still the case, I think we’ll see much worse than we have now, and that it would escalate to a regional and perhaps world war. I know there isn’t much more we can do militarily but the question is whether there is anything that can be done politically to salvage the situation, and if so, how quickly can we see progress and would the current (or slightly increased) troop numbers be able to hold the dam until the political power is there to force the militias to lay down arms.
Uh, it’s late and I’m tired…excuse my poor sentence structure and I hope that some of what I wrote made sense!
Let us consider a different question. Who was the first soldier to die after it had been realized we couldn’t “win”?
CS- The political solution most pundits and political advisors are coming up with is negotiating with regional powers- Iran and Syria. Baker has already had backdoor talks with both, because he knows that the US is not capable of forcing a political solution, and as you stated, a military solution is no longer possible. We have reached a point where the only hope is not to destabilize the entire region, or allow the war to widen. I think the goal of a free and democratic Iraq is DOA.
Pyst his 100% right, and it was the only legit and defensible reason to invade Iraq. When disproven we should have exited two years ago. Period.
The idea that one feeds more bodies to the fire so that tthe dead and charred can gain some ‘comfort’ is specious. the dead are dead. Life is for the breathing, so let’s keep as many of ours inhaling as we can.
If the Iraqis lack the will to stand up, well, FUCK’EM! Let’em swing. Recall all the horror stories of a Commie takeover in Vietnam. Well, there were horrors, but no worse than that the Russians, Chines, french, and yes, we inflicted. Then, something happened- the younger generation decided that Communism wasn’t so cool, and although Vietnam has a ways to go, it is hardly a leninist fantasy land.
The Viets actually chose to try and prosper. If the Irqis cannot throw off their barbarous religious delusions, Fuck’em.
Even though it was bogus, let’s assume W really did have good intentions. He got rid of Saddam, and how have the Iraqis responded? In 3 years they’ve killed twice as many people as Saddam did in thirty-five years of rule. No amount of puppeteering by us can change that, sadly.
When rabid dogs are at either end of an alley, go up the fire escape and let them tear each other to shreds. Staying only adds the element of terrorism to a Civil War. We should also back the formation of a Kurdish state- if we really support Democracy, for they are the only party that has behaved decently in this whole mess. To hell with Turkey and realpolitik.
CS, that might happen, but I think Iran would want to stay out of Iraq for three major reasons:
1) Iran so far has been able to keep peace within its borders because of a non-sectarian nationalism. I would think the last thing they would want to to would to possibly bring the sectarian violence across the border. Maybe they think they can manage it but…
2) An invasion or an open support for a Shia state draws a lot of attention at Iran at a time when they are hoping the US’s blunders let their nuclear activities continue with a relative ammount of disinterest.
3) Impinging on Iraq’s soverignty gives the US a ready made invasion excuse to stop Iran. It might even be enough to swing public oppinion back to something like 3 years ago.
Note that all of these points change or are completely negated once Iran has a nuclear warhead. I’d say they are trying to bide their time and keep the status quo until they have that.