There hasn’t been any price for opposing Bush’s policies for a long time. There is no better evidence of this than the fact that the Democrats did not lose one House seat, one Senate seat, or one Governor’s seat. It didn’t matter what part of the country you were in, not a single incumbent opponent of Bush was defeated anywhere. But it wasn’t until we could see the proof of this that the true debacle that is Iraq began to come into clear focus. I say ‘begin’ because as far as I am concerned very few people really get it, even now. I don’t even see a full recognition of the magnitude of the shift from my fellow bloggers. But the military is starting to get it.
Barely one in three service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, according to the new poll for the four papers (Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Times). In another startling finding, only 41% now feel it was the right idea to go to war in Iraq in the first place.
And the number who feel success there is likely has shrunk from 83% in 2004 to about 50% today. A surprising 13% say there should be no U.S. troops in Iraq at all.
This comes even though only about one in ten called their overall political views “liberal.”
The annual mail survey was conducted Nov. 13 through Dec. 22. Among the respondents, two in three have deployed at least once to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Nearly three-quarters of the respondents think today’s military is stretched too thin to be effective.
Nothing has really changed in Iraq that would lead to a dramatic cratering of military support for the effort. What changed was that we had an election, and the Democrats won in every region of the country, while the Republicans lost. This has had an effect on a subconcious level. When Bush followed up his losses by immediately cashiering Donald Rumsfeld, it just cemented the message. Iraq is a disaster and will only bring defeat to anyone that associates themselves with it.
In spite of this, the President continues to think we can turn Iraq into a ‘a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror’. But we cannot accomplish those things. The military senses that they have ‘no clear mission’ and they are resisting the call for a surge of new troops. It’s ironic that the military feels this way because making Iraq into ‘a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror’ would seem to be a fairly clear mission.
The problem is that there is no prospect, no strategy, that has a chance in hell of accomplishing that mission in any reasonable amount of time, at any reasonable cost, and anything like the current troop levels (which are, in any case, unsustainable).
We’re back to 1972, looking for ‘a decent interval’. We’d like to pull out our troops and not have the government in Baghdad collapse for a couple years after we are gone. But, unlike in Vietnam, we don’t have anyone to negotiate with. No one can prevent the implosion of Iraq. Not the Iranians, not the Saudis, not the Syrians, nor the Turks, not even the Iraqis can prevent the collapse of Iraq.
The administration is struggling to come up with a strategy that can stave off defeat. One idea, the 80% solution would have us take the side of SCIRI in an intramural fight among the Shi’a and have them wipe out the Sunnis. That policy is obviously a non-starter with our Sunni allies in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey. The mere fact that we appear to be considering it is staggering. It should come as no surprise that the Saudis responded by threatening to fund al-Qaeda in Iraq and (essentially) recalling their ambassador. There may be more to al-Turki’s departure than just displeasure over the 80% strategy, but I do not think it is a mere coincidence.
If we try to pursue our occupation of Iraq under our current leadership we will lose our regional allies. We’ll break our army. We’ll bankrupt the nation. And we’ll have nothing to show for it because we invaded under false pretenses and ‘fixed’ intelligence.
There is no avoiding negative consequences for our blunder into Iraq, but there will be no negative consequences for those that oppose Bush’s plans to stay and even escalate in Iraq.
We will eventually be seen as either the people that saved America or the people that tried to save America. And the more people, especially you politicians, that join us the better our chances of saving American will be.
Let’s hope the politicians have the cajones or spine or whatever to oppose the war now that it is safe to do so.
They will hardly be inspiring, but the may do some belated good.
This is really an important test of our elected officials. I pray they pass it, but I’m not holding my breath.
We know that under all of this is the perceived (I do not believe it is an actual) need to control the oil in the Middle East. I don’t mean that we’re there to steal Iraq’s oil, although that might be true. I think the arguments saying this more about control the volatility of oil pricing hold more weight.
And having seen “The Power of Nightmares” – a BBC special I highly recommend, I also think the neocons really do think they can “bring” Democracy to the world, as if it’s a gift that’s easy to receive.
If we had learned the lessons of Vietnam, is that no outside force can ever come into any country and tell them how to behave politically. Maybe in a tiny country like Grenada you can get away with that. But not a country even the size of Vietnam would put up with that.
What if, say, Canadian soldiers started bombing all our major cities with the goal of bringing us universal health care? It’s not that we don’t want healthcare, but who the heck would the Canadians be to bomb us to impose that upon us? They might call themselves “rescuers” or “liberators” but it’s easy to see that we would not see it that way.
And of course – the neocons don’t want true democracy there, or here, for that matter. All they want is the “appearance” of democracy to placate the masses, while private interests rape and pillage public resources.
I’m very distressed to see that we’re exporting the horrors of electronic voting to many other countries around the world. They’ve suffered, in many cases, all kinds of vote fraud from handbased counts and look to computers as neutral, unbiased observers. Now we know, here in the frogpond, how ridiculous that assumption is. But we have a lot of work to do before the rest of the world realizes this is a dangerous Trojan horse.
Yikes. I need to get back to my work on Ford…!
in orange.
.
No leader is willing to be seen near this administration, not with a 10 foot pole. Team Bush-Cheney are a losing combination in the Middle-East, the last person who will see reality is Joe of course.
The Israeli’s are on their own in the region, now relying on a nuclear deterrent. The U.S. will be lucky to have a few large military bases, strategically placed to be supplied by air. That all (oil) was lost became clear when the Iraqi’s had to resort to the Chinese for development of their oil fields and Bechtel trumpeted retreat.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Though the tardy be welcome in my peaceful camp, it is hard to honor them with any respect. These are the same people who didn’t recognize Nixon for what he was. They didn’t and still don’t realize the mistake of Vietnam. Bush and who he is was out there long ago for them to see. Yet they failed once again…..some still don’t recognize him.
Democrats, republicans, or neither, I welcome their support in opposing this occupation….it isn’t and never was a war. Respect will take some time.
The politicians don’t work apart from us, unless we let them. In November, we recalled several who weren’t working for us, and put in other people in those positions. We have to keep up the pressure on all of the politicians, and keep saying it:
Get us out of this war. Rip off your blinders, if you’ve been wearing them, and look at what the people see. This is a horrible disaster. Continuing as if this is not so only compounds the trouble, and threatens our own future. Stop, now. Start repairing the damage to your own citizens, and to the world.
I believe that is very very true Kid-we have to keep the pressure up on the new Congress with emails/letters whatever it takes to remind them what most people in this country now want…out of Iraq, healthcare, jobs, fair trade, fixing the devastation of Katrina and so on. It was obvious from almost hours after the election that the whole bush cabal was going to carry on as they have been, doing what THEY want to as they continue to screw us all over. And no one should be surprised at that anyway …we just have to try and help Congress see that having a spine is a good thing.
Of course I’d really like to see people marching in the street en mass to get the message to congress but that’s probably a pipe dream.