What to do with Iraq

The Economist has an excellent review of the situation in Iraq and what the prospective Presidential candidates might do about it.

Iraq five years on

They subtly point to an important matter for Democrats to attend to. Whether they know it or not, they are vulnerable on this issue, right now.

Americans do want to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible. Of course. Who doesn't. But what Americans are loathe to do more than seeing their friends and family dying is seeing their friends and family die in vain because we did not offer them an opportunity to make this situation right.

The greatest tragedy of this war is not that we engaged in it. The greatest tragedy of this war is that we did it in the name of liberal democracy, all the while ignoring our strongest liberal values. It must look like absurdity to the Iraqis and many people watching this effort around the world. The greatest tragedy of this war is that we have engaged such a high-stakes, life and death effort and we cannot have an honest debate and discussion about it and what we should do about it, the self-righteous posturing, pressuring, leveraging, and otherwise illiberal practices have so overwhelmed our more liberal commitments.

And, as a consequence, everyone gets wrapped up in their own bullshit. It's really the only alternative to the absence of an honest and open liberal democratic discussion and debate. Instead, what you have is partisans that swim in their own waters, reinforce their own prejudices and shortsighted notions of the war and world, and distort the more honest debate and discussion, leveraging and bullying their way through the discussion in lieu of honest, humble thought and discussion.

As a consequence, partisans and all of us lose track of peoples' more honest feelings and thoughts on the matter.

Five years ago, when this war was started, it was conventional wisdom that opposing a sitting President in this war was political suicide, since it meant opposing the large majorities of people who supported the President. It was such political suicide that very few members of the House or Senate who might have had private reservations about the matter were willing to voice them or slow or halt the drumbeat of war so that a fuller, more open, honest debate and discussion could occur about the war. Senator Hillary Clinton was one of those Senators who remained quiet for fear of rousing that electorate.

That was five years ago.

Within the last year or two, that tide has changed. Now the conventional wisdom is that the war was a mistake and that pullout should occur as soon as possible to avoid anymore unnecessary tragedy. The pendulum has swung. And will swing many more times before our lifetimes and, likely, the lifetimes of all people who have the opportunity to live on this earth, have ended. People have grown war-weary, liberal news outlets warn us. We need to end this ill-conceived war.

But, like the previous conventional wisdom and every conventional wisdom before and after that, it does not reveal deeper truths about peoples' aspirations and how they feel about this war.

Americans do not want to see more soldiers die, that is true. But neither do they want to see Iraqis slaughtered to wipe our consciences. Some will rationalize that way. But it will not be honest. We know that we have a choice in the matter. And we are responsible for that choice, no matter which way we turn with this decision, more or less tragic, which is all we can hope for, at this point.

And reality always has a way of bumping into our conventional wisdom and giving it a spin in another direction.

The reality in Iraq that the current round of distractions in our democratic conversation about this mess is avoiding is that the Iraqi government is not ready, yet, to handle it's own security. And it faces several formidable foes, all of whom could overwhelm its capacity, even if just for some time, and cause the deaths of many, many Shias and Sunnis, primarily, but also Kurds and others who stand in their way.

The Iraqi government, military, law enforcement and other brave people trying to bring some safety and security to the lives of average Iraqis, and the representatives in parliament and of the warring groups who are trying to negotiate a democratic peace and governing arrangement for the country, will tell the United States when they do not need the help from American troops.

The Iraqis are not children. They are a fledgling democracy of people trying to create a self-determining future for themselves. But the challenges they are facing are overwhelming. They are overwhelming for us, and we live thousands of miles away in relative safety. We can only imagine how challenging they are for Iraqis.

They need our help. If there are Americans or others who do not want to offer help, I think it would be wise policy to let them step down, honorably and with no guilt or pressure or other kinds of manipulation to make them stay. And, perhaps, it is time for people like me to take more seriously the idea of stepping up and pitching in. I'm trying to figure out how that might best fit into commitments I have already made in my life, at this point. I've made a commitment to this school and these kids I work with and I feel a sense of responsibility to them. To be honest, I'm a little nervous about committing myself to a war that so many people are treating like a lost cause, at this point, and I do not want to lose my life in vain, either. But maybe it is something I need to give more serious thought to, at this point, given that I believe in the cause.

Iraqis need the help of our military, right now. I wish they didn't. It would mean a lot fewer of our men and women dying in that effort. But they do. And when they don't, they will say so. Because the last thing that any Iraqis want, right now, is for Americans to determine their fates or to have boots on their soil unnecessarily. That really is the trick for everyone. How to get Americans home safely without unnecessarily sacrificing the lives of thousands of Iraqis, who have clearly borne the greatest sacrifices and greatest number of sacrifices in this effort.

If people don't want to help or do not see it as worthwhile, I understand that. But the Iraqis need our help, someone's help, right now. And those who want to pitch in need to be able to do it. And the American military, as an institution, along with diplomatic efforts where they will be useful, of course, is the best situated to offer the hand up they need.

Imposing democracy on Iraqis has not worked. Pressuring the Iraqis to come to an agreement has clearly not worked. Pressuring for a pullout has not and will not work. Pressuring their neighbor, Iran, to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons has not worked. The whole mess has been so clearly counterproductive to anyone not defending it that it is hard for me to believe that grown ups are responsible for that policy except that my experience is that those who engage in it, first and foremost, do not want to take responsibility for its failure or any failure that they think might jeopardize their power.

It is the logic of power. If power is the key to my goals, many people reason and have always reasoned, I must have that power above and beyond the responsibility that gives that power legitimacy because taking such responsibility means jeapordizing the power that I need to accomplish my goals, even if that power is unproductive or counterproductive in achieving those goals. And this war has been one long object lesson in why liberal democracy, as a form of governance, is so important to counter and check that logic.

We should thank Baron de Montesquiue for that. And Voltaire. And John Stuart Mill. And Lord Acton. And George Orwell. And James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. And John Locke and Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau and the whole lot, of course. But the greatest tragedy of the 21st century is that all of these people worked so hard to make liberal democracy available to us, only to watch us take its values and institutions for granted and rationalize our illiberal impulses in the name of that liberal democracy. And, all the while, fighting a war in the name of liberal and democratic values that we persistently denigrate as too soft and weak for us to take them seriously. It is the strangest, as well as ugliest and stupidest, spectacle for anyone in the world to bear witness to.

And the irony is that Democrats who are sure that they were right about this war, at the outset, many of whom were right that danger lurked ahead and that cooler heads should have debated, discussed, and planned out, better, how they were going to engage this war, if they were going to engage it at all, are watching that advantage slip away as they rally their troops for a pullout that most Americans are not convinced, as much as they would like to see the troops come home, can occur without serious consequences. And after such an event might occur, all of us will watch and have to live with the consequences that this war has to offer.

The truth is that doing the right thing really is the best option. That doesn't mean that we don't take the worse options, now and again. It just means that the best option is the one that generally brings the best consequences for our lives. We are all of us, with no exception, subject to taking the worse options, now and again. It's foolish, to be sure. And it has consequences we don't always like. But it just is. It's a function of being a human being with limited wisdom who doesn't always know what is best. And the best option is always the more honest one, within reason.

And the right thing, in this situation, is to honor our commitment to Iraqis and the newly democratic Iraqi government whom didn't ask for this war and need our help until they can handle the situation on their own.

I think we can handle that. And I need to figure out how to put my money where my mouth is on this one. My grandmother, a long-time Republican, and a father of a friend of mine, a Vietnam war vet, and many friends dissuaded me from signing up earlier in this war. Perhaps that was a mistake. All I know is that the Iraqis need our help.

And Democrats need to get figured out that this impulse, and not their more cynical political advantage and strategizing, is the real impulse that animates the American people. The beautiful thing about a liberal democracy is that when you have adopted a poor idea or policy or course of action, noone else has to follow you down that road if you're not going to listen to their concerns. We still behave more illiberal than our truer motivations betray. And we still have doubts about how good of people we really want to be, often, I think.

But, at the bottom of all of that, noone will feel good if American soldiers come home and Iraq erupts into a bloodbath because of that. We can try to rationalize it with all of the sanctimony that followed Vietnam. But it will be bullshit. And, this time, we will know better.

Because then there will be Sudan. And Lebanon. And Gaza. And Kenya. And Myanmar. And Tibet. And Taiwan. And Kosovo. And Mozambique. And a million other places in the world where we will be presented with the choice about how we might deal with a claim of freedom or self-determination or a totalitarian regime oppressing or killing or mass-murdering its civilians or some violent threat that we cannot sit idly by and watch terrorize a population without some kind of effective response.

What do we do with Iraq? That question is bigger than just this immediate war. It will offer us insight into what to do in a million future situations. Which is why it deserves an honest debate and discussion, and not just sanctimonious leveraging for advantage in the moment. This is not the last war we will fight. If there is any lesson to be learned from Vietnam, that is the one. And we need an honest debate and discussion to sort these questions out and to offer us some lessons and answers and some good faith to work with one another during this war and in all of our efforts after the fact.

It's not our military power or our political muscle or our economic largess that make America great. That's got it backwards. What makes America great is our capacity work together with one another, honestly, in common cause. And that is what makes our military power and our political muscle and our economic largess available when we need them.

And that is what America needs, right now. It needs for us to remember that working together with one another in common cause, and having the freedom to step away from that commitment, if we you so choose, is what makes us great. And what makes people great, when they so choose. That's what made America and the world great during World War II. It was the fact that we fought in common cause, and we did so for freedom, not for the right to impose our will on the world. Had we fought for that cause, we most assuredly would have lost. Because that was the cause that our enemy fought for, and he most assuredly lost that war.

What do we do with Iraq? I would suggest that the answer to that question is found a little deeper than we have been searching, thus far. A little deeper is where we find what is better in us, what is best in us. And that is where we will find the answer to this question.

And we will do it, better, with a little honest debate and discussion about the matter. Liberal values and liberal democracy really do offer us a better route. If only we will find the courage to take them seriously.