I have never understood how killing draftees and blowing up buildings in a dictator-dominated country would get that country’s citizens to love us or decide to emulate our form of government. The Iraqis who are on the receiving end of America’s military might don’t seem to understand this idea, either. But even though invading Iraq wholesale instead of helping locals depose or assassinate Saddam Hussein was one of the most idiotic foreign policy moves the U.S. has ever made, I believe we cannot and should not abandon Iraq. We broke Iraq, and it is now our responsibility to fix it, just as Colin Powell warned it would be, back when the Iraqi war was nothing but a gleam in Dick Cheney’s eye.

We pulled out of Vietnam and left it “broken,” and if we do the same thing to Iraq, we will be seen as an unreliable ally for many generations to come.

You can argue — rightly — that in many ways Vietnam healed itself better than we could have healed it. At the same time, you can argue just as rightly that we essentially abandoned the Vietnamese who fought on our side; that we created hundreds of thousands of refugees, and that people who supported us but were unable to leave Vietnam were punished severely for the crime of working with or for America.

We seem poised to repeat this mistake in Iraq. And we will take a major “hit” to our already-tarnished international reputation if we do.

The Super-SWAT Strategy

I am not saying our current strategy in Iraq is working and that we must “stay the course.” I believe we should maintain a much smaller force in Iraq than we have now, hunkered down in secure positions, that only goes on raids or other forays in response to requests from Iraqi police or military units. In other words, rather than acting as primary patrollers or roadblock operators, U.S. forces would be the equivalent of a SWAT team that could be called on when needed.

If the Iraqis never call on our troops, fine. They can hang out in their rec rooms and play video games or chat with people back home over the Internet in between training. And if they are called out, it will be for a specific purpose, to fight a specific battle, a posture which suits our military’s mission-oriented attitude far better than rolling around on aimless patrols, endlessly wondering when the next roadside bomb is going to go off.

This strategy will no doubt lead to at least a few ambushes based on spurious calls from rebel-infiltrated Iraqi units. But, hopefully, troops who only roll out on specific missions will be at a high stated of readiness whenever they leave their bases, instead of being dulled by routine patrol duties. This should make them more capable of turning ambushes around than they are now.

More important, Iraqi forces would instigate any action involving U.S. troops. We would be helpers, not originators. We would be Iraq’s ally, not an occupying force. The Iraqi government might still be corrupt and inefficient, but that would be the Iraqis’ problem, not ours. We might not like all (or even most) of the decisions made by the Iraqi government, but that’s too bad. It’s their country, not ours.

This isn’t a short-term strategy. It’s one that might last up to 10 years. But we could probably maintain it with less than one-fourth of our current troop levels in Iraq. This isn’t the same as bringing our boys and girls home right away, but it might be politically palatable in the U.S., a strategy all but the most radical anti-war people here could accept.

We Need To Catch Osama bin Laden

Six years ago President Bush and other administration stump-speechers promised to catch or kill Osama bin Laden.

Every day Osama is at large is a victory for Islamic radicals.

When a person or government promises to do something, then doesn’t do it, why should we believe subsequent promises made by that person or government?

George W. Bush didn’t make his promise to capture bin Laden as a private person. He made it in his official capacity as President of the United States of America, which means that we as a nation must keep that promise or be looked at by the rest of the world as liars or — just as bad — incompetents.

“Capture or kill Osama bin Laden” needs to move from our “To Do” list to our “Mission Accomplished” list before the U.S. can expect even a tiny bit of international credibility. Sorry folks, but if a small-timer like bin Laden can bamboozle all of our military, intelligence, and law enforcement machinery, you can’t expect anyone else (like the Iranian government or Latin American druglords) to put much stock in threats made by our government.

Hopefully, our next president will decide to actually capture or kill Osama bin Laden, not just to jawbone about how we really, maybe ought to do it one day — after we deal with Iraq.

Pity the Next President

A few astute individuals may have noticed that I am not running for president. I am not alone. The vast majority of Americans are not running. That’s because picking up Bush’s mess is going to be a thankless and possibly undoable job. Only an ego-dominated nutcase would want to take it on.

So far, I am not overly impressed with any of the people who think they can handle being the first president of the post-Bush era.

John McCain might be able to deal with our Iraq problem. As a military veteran whose son is now a Marine, he at least has the moral authority to do it. And I suspect that our military establishment respects him more than most of the other candidates. But I doubt very much that he’ll become our next president. I don’t think he’ll even get the Republican nomination.

The rest of the candidates don’t seem to be thinking about Iraq in a long-term, strategic sense at all. As near as I can tell, they have based their positions on this vital issue on their beliefs about what “the electorate” wants — or at least thinks it wants, since I don’t believe “the electorate” has put a lot of thought into the long-term ramifications of our behavior in Iraq, either.

The one long-term hope I have is that we’ll have a new and better crop of candidates in 2012, which is entirely possible.

Face it: There is no decision any president can make now about Iraq that will satisfy a significant majority of Americans. And there are many other Bush initiatives our next president will have to reverse, no matter what he or she says now, during this way-too-long campaign.

I expect the president elected in 2008 to last only one term, because cleaning up behind Bush is going to take so many hard decisions that I doubt any president, from any party, can make them without inspiring widespread hatred.

It’s fun to be an American in the 21st Century, isn’t it?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.