Cross Posted from The Pennsylvania Progressive:
History will point to the American invasion of Iraq as one of the worst strategic decisions of all time. This move completely destabilized a critical region already teetering on the precipice. I fear the long term effect on the entire Middle East will make this historical aspect a reality. One thing I keep hearing on television by the talking heads and pundits is that if we withdraw the country will descend into chaos. Chaos? You mean like this:
- No effective central government
- A government controlled by one faction getting ready to avenge hundreds of years of oppression by another
- Such a lack of security children cannot go to school safely
- Such a lack of security 85 people are kidnapped in broad daylight while leaving their place of work
More….
- No construction work being done to rebuild the country’s infrastructure
- Oil revenues down to a trickle because no one can secure the pipelines
- The country actually having to import oil to meet its needs
- A government in a city so dangerous it has to be fortified and defended by another country’s military
- A government with no legal recourse, enforcement, or recourse against mercenaries cruising its territory killing citizens at will
- Hundreds of citizens found dead on the streets of its capitol city every month
- Conditions so dangerous press and media cannot do their jobs, report on conditions outside highly protected areas, or determine exactly what conditions in the country are without being killed or kidnapped
- Occupation soldiers being kidnapped, tortured, dragged behind trucks, beheaded and dismembered
- A legal system so bad it cannot keep the lawyers alive for its star defendant
I have news for everyone, the chaos is there already. There’s no need to wait. We have two choices: either we send one million troops to Iraq to secure the country, spend hundreds of billions rebuilding the country and somehow reverse all the political damage from Abu Ghraib, the torture at Gitmo and the seemingly uncontrolled murderous behavior of our soldiers against defenseless civilians or we admit we’ve lost this war and leave.
Maureen Dowd reports in The New York Times:
That Republicans are happy to have the issue debated because they could attack Democrats this fall over these three points:
“that the withdrawal being advocated by Democrats would mean thousands of troops would have died for nothing, would give extremists a launching pad from which to build an Islamo-fascist empire and would hand the United States its must humiliating defeat since Vietnam.”
Of course all three of these points are true. Our troops have died for nothing, Iraq has become a launching pad, and it is a humiliating defeat for the U.S. I don’t contest any of those points. Of course, at this point those aren’t the point. The point is that these were all arguments Democrats made for NOT fighting this war in the first place. These were all arguments made for NOT invading Iraq.
Essentially Republicans are now acknowledging, finally, that we were right in opposing this war before it began.
The only question left to determine is this: who will the last man to die for a mistake and why?
