The war in Iraq is nearing its end, at least the portion of the war involving American forces. And it’s not because of the noble efforts of Congressman Conyers and others. None of that matters right now, though it will in the days to come. What does matter is that a slim majority of the public doesn’t consider the war to have been worth fighting. A larger majority believes that, worth it or not, it’s time to call the troops home. Worse, we are losing, and we are losing badly.
The truth — that this war was deceitfully launched by a bizarre alliance of would-be imperialists, arrogant ideologues, oil industry shills, and outright nutcases — is entirely beside the point. A voluntary war, by definition, is an act of either madness, stupidity, or brazen evil. Reason and truth come later.
Here’s how it plays out:
Even if the situation gets no worse, public support for the war is fast evaporating. In Congress, even some Republicans are calling for a withdrawal plan. As the situation on the ground in Iraq deteriorates, so will the domestic political situation.
The military situation is dire. We never had the forces we needed to win at the outset, and we are even worse off now. Recruiting is not adequate to keep the number of troops in the field at a break-even level, and that despite heavy-handed recruitment tactics so outrageous that even the Pentagon called for a stop to them. Conservative pundits, incredibly, won’t even urge their audiences to enlist. The only remaining option is a draft, and common wisdom says Bush wouldn’t dare. That might or might not be true. Bush doesn’t have brains, but he does have brass balls. Public support will fall through the floor if he does call for a draft.
From a purely military perspective, however, the simple fact is that the United States military does not have the strength to take and hold territory in Iraq without first turning it into a lifeless wasteland. We can “win” Iraq that way, but in no other sense. Our opportunity to win a true victory, which was a narrow opportunity at best, disappeared behind the walls of Abu Ghraib. The insurgency, far from being in its “last throes”, is now broad and well-entrenched, and it is gaining ground. The only Iraqi territory under secure US control is the Green Zone in Baghdad. Everything else is contested, save for the growing number of cities under total insurgent control.
All that has to happen now is for the insurgents to push Baghdad into chaos. They do not need to achieve decisive control of the capital any more than the North Vietnamese Army needed to win a decisive battle against the United States (they never did). All they have to do is deny control to the invader. When it becomes obvious to the American public that the situation is completely out of control, lack of support for the war will become active opposition. And the insurgency knows it.
Scott McClellan is not going to be able to stand behind his podium with his non-answers once the Iraqi Tet is well under way. Republican congressmen, after all, are not going to be willing to throw themselves on the Iraq grenade for George Bush. And while FOX News can ignore Democrat politicians, dissent from leading GOP politicians is going to get coverage. And public opinion will turn.
I do not believe that BushCo is going to back down, no matter how much public opinion turns against them. These people are too convinced of their own righteousness, their divinely-appointed mission from God, to be swayed at this point.
That’s where Dennis Conyers comes in.
The left has spent the last two years assembling a damning case against the Bush administration. We have so many smoking guns that you can’t tell how many we have because there’s so much damn smoke in the air. As soon as Congress and the public seriously want out of the war, they will seize at anything to achieve that goal. Winning a war makes the majority willing to forgive anything; losing one, on the other hand…
So we will withdraw, with or without George Bush. If he has to be impeached to accomplish that, he will be impeached. I suspect that it will come to that; for Bush to retreat or resign is unimaginable. Republican congressmen will eagerly join that drive if it happens, hoping that they will be among the political survivors if they are energetic enough in distancing themselves from Bush.
The war will go on, of course. If Saddam hasn’t been executed by then, it’s not completely impossible that he could find himself back in charge of the Sunni region of Iraq. If not him, one of his lieutenants surely will. The Kurds are certainly not going to accept the Baathist yoke again, while the Turks are not going to accept an independent Kurdistan. The Shia south will rapidly become more of an Iranian puppet than it is already. It’s going to be a goddamn ugly mess for a long, long time. And if the last US defeat is any indication, we’re going to be licking our wounds for even longer, too busy repairing the economic damage of GOP rule to bother with rebuilding the military.
The terrible outcome to this story is going to be that everyone loses. The power and prestige of the United States, if not completely destroyed, will be severely damaged. Iraq will be much worse off that it was under Saddam; arguably, it already is. The war will spread, certainly not to apocalyptic proportions, but bad enough to earn a chapter in the history books. Perhaps worst of all, the precedent set by American behavior in this war will be used to justify atrocities in other countries’ wars for decades to come.
We will have our work cut out for us.
