posted by Damozel | Updated below.
Here's one of my favorite conservative pundits (the others being Hitchens and, of course, P.J.) discussing a poll of 600 Iowa Republicans. Andrew Sullivan: "It's over, Mr. President." But is it? One of his readers has questioned whether the Iowa Republican base is typical of Republicans elsewhere. Some of them agree with John McCain that we must "stay the course." So, as an antiwar Democrat, I am asking myself: is there any chance at all they have a point? I mean, yes, of course it would have been better if we hadn't allowed ourselves to be frightened into this position, but we were, and so whether the war was wrong or right just isn't relevant anymore.
The only question is what we are going to do next. And it's really hard to think about that without getting emotional about it, which is the exact reason why people need to think about it without getting emotional. I'm as nervous now about the immediate troop withdrawal strategy being pushed by the people I almost always agree with as I was when the nation voted to go to war in the first place.
Of course, this makes me nervous too---the president comparing his multigenerational plan for Iraq to the "lengthy"---as in 50 years---presence of truth in South Korea "to provide stability but not...a frontline combat role." As the article in Truthout from which I'm quoting says,
"The United States has had thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea to guard against a North Korean invasion for 50 years." According to mouthpiece Tony Snow, the president is thinking of the Korean model. ""The Korean model is one in which the United States provides a security presence, but you've had the development of a successful democracy in South Korea over a period of years, and, therefore, the United States is there as a force of stability," Snow told reporters."
But perhaps he should be speaking not of Korea, but of Saudi Arabia.
During 2003, U.S.troops redeployed ("were redeployed?") from Saudi Arabia. Quoting from an April 2003 article in The Telegraph now: "Withdrawal of "infidel" American forces from Saudi Arabia has been one of the demands of Osama bin Laden, although a senior US military official said that this was "irrelevant"." But I am not sure the article's writer fully believed this (those skeptical Brits!) because he further comments:
[quote begins from The Telegraph (April 30, 2004, America to Withdraw Troops from Saudi Arabia" by David Rennie]
The withdrawal ends a contentious 12-year-old presence in Saudi Arabia and marks the most dramatic in a set of sweeping changes in the deployment of American forces after the war in Iraq....
Mr Rumsfeld said the "liberation of Iraq" had made the region a safer place. He played down the finality of the shift, saying that the US-Saudi relationship was "multi-dimensional - diplomatic, economic, as well as military to military"...
Behind the dry talk of rearranging America's military "footprint" in the Gulf, the great imponderables were bin Laden and Muslim radicals' complaints about the presence of "infidels" in the birthplace of Islam.
That presence was cited as one of the main justifications for the September 11 attacks.
Despite American insistence that the withdrawal had not been "dictated" by al-Qa'eda and that bin Laden was "irrelevant", there can be little doubt that undercutting a central plank of al-Qa'eda's platform is one of several advantages offered by withdrawal from Saudi Arabia.
In essence, the Bush administration has moved swiftly to take advantage of the toppling of Saddam to downgrade a relationship increasingly mired in mutual suspicion and tension.
The relationship has never fully recovered from the revelation that 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
[quote ends]
Now of course you could make an argument that article contains an opinion presented as a statement of fact. "[T]here can be little doubt that....In essence...." and so forth.
But with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, Rumsfeld's overconfident assertion that "the region is now a safer place" is either bleakly amusing, or wildly infuriating, depending on whether you're a person who thinks or a person who feels..
And though the connection between the proportion of Saudi terrorists to ones of other nationalities is often cited by Americans as just another terrorist-related enigma (because why would you expect the Saudis to hate us for our wealth and freedom?), it seems to me that a completely detached, objective observer might just spot a potential connection there. If so---I said if, please, Mr. Giuliani!---what would this imply about the potential consequences of our becoming a similar (or greater) presence in Iraq for the next 50 years or however long it takes (but to do what? Nobody ever really answers this, except in vague phrases such as "to secure the region" or "establish democracy")?
I'm sure that there are all sorts of ways in which remaining in Iraq would be different, and I'm waiting to hear what they are or why they don't---as opposed to "shouldn't"---matter. I don't want to be told what is or is not "relevant"; I want to hear some meaningful weighing of risks and benefits from both sides. What would be the best course, for whom, and why? What are the beneifts of one course over another? Saving the lives of troops is certainly an argument for withdrawal, but can't be the only consideration. Or can it? I've heard the president's long-term assessment of the situation (I suppose); what do the people on the "withdraw now" side of the argument project will be the consequences of going as opposed to staying?
It seems to me that we long ago passed the point in Iraq where categories such as "good" and "bad" had much meaning with respect to the possible solution, but perhaps it is still possible to talk in terms of "better" and "worse" (so long as we fill in the blanks: better for whom and in what way? Worse for whom in what way?)
I am not versed in military strategy and very little respect for the intelligence of people who, like children and adolescents, use violence rather than persuasion (or political pressure) to create social changes, mainly because I.can't understand how it's escaped their attention that violence creates the sort of turbulence that makes it impossible for the initiator to control the outcome.
But it seems to me that, inadvertently or otherwise, the Iraq war has put us in a position where pulling troops out of the region would indeed "give the terrists (sic) what they want" and send a message that if they create sufficient chaos and cause sufficient harms, peaceable Americans will put pressure on their leaders to do whatever is necessary to extract the thorn, as it were. Which in turn suggests exactly the danger that the president and the hawkier Republicans fear. I don't know whether this fear is rational or not, but the argument has a certain emotional resonance.
As far as I can see, there's really no solution that isn't both good and bad; people who think we should stay the course differ from people who don't only in the value they assign to particular risks versus particular benefits. How will the future differ for us, the Iraqui people, or our allies if we bring home all the troops as opposed to leaving some of them there in a supporting role, whatever that means? If we leave, do we encourage them to believe that their tactics work? If we stay, do we create more and deeper animosities, thereby creating the conditions for another round of 911 style attacks (which enabled this ill-conceived and ill-starred war in the first place)? If the answer to both is "yes," which would be worse?
I don't know the answers to these questions; I am simply allowing myself to be persuaded by people who purport to know that we should withdraw sooner rather than later and to take it on faith that they've thought all this through. At present, I'm relegated to hoping against hope that underneath all the rhetoric and rage and emotion the people who are making the decisions on my behalf (and who are in many instances the same people who enabled the war in the first instance) are making it this time based on a pragmatic analysis of all the possible scenarios rather than out of emotions, including the fear that if they don't do what most of us think we want they won't be reelected.
Because whatever they decide, the solution is going to have significant risks and drawbacks. Furthermore, the war still won't be really over till all of its consequences have been fully played out. And those are going to be a long time unfolding.
The cost in the meantime is incalculable and so how do you reckon it up or factor it in? How do you keep from becoming emotional over this and what sort of emotion is the right one? In which direction does a proper appreciation for the sacrifice take us? People even differ on that score; and I know what I feel but not what it means or ought to mean. While we shouldn't decide the issues based on emotion, we can't forget to remember what some people have lost or are going to lose. If we're going to accept this sort of sacrifice we need to know why and for what. If we're not, we need to assure people for whom it's too late that the sacrifices made a difference to the world.
The Crux posted a photo of the Memorial Day tribute by the Veterans for Peace in the city of Gainesville, Florida. Here's a live, YouTube versiion [thank you, Harold Saive for calling it to my attention]. After we've totted up all the pragmatic arguments in favor of a complete withdrawal versus maintaining a presence, that's when we need to consider how this changes the balance.
UPDATE
I know I'm leaning heavily on Andrew Sullivan today, and I don't like to lean on anyone else ever, but it's just the way it turned out; his postings set me thinking
He pulled this quote out of a story at Yahoo News: [from Yahoo News, Network of Terror Spreads In Shattered Mideast Societies by Georgie Ann Geyer (29 May 2007)
Friends of [the president's] from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."
[quoted by Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, The Presidential Disconnect , 31 May 2007)]
First of all, the quote answers the questions presented here. Second of all, the article. addresses some of the very issues I raised in the note I just posted, or it seems to me that it does. [Yahoo News, Network of Terror Spreads In Shattered Mideast Societies by Georgie Ann Geyer]
Comments