What's Going On In Iraq
and
What Should We Do About It?
I'm gratified to be able to answer promptly:
I don't know.
My guess is: neither do you.
I hear people claiming that Iraq is basically Hell on Earth. I hear others claiming that it's great, the people are undaunted, the violence spectacular but rare--as in the U.S. I've come to the conclusion that I simply do not know what is going on over there. A gazillion dollars worth of people and cameras over there and we still can't tell what's up. Is it just me? Does everybody else know what's going on?
And even if I did know what was going on over there, I'm in no real position to know what to do about it. I praised Beinart's Op-Ed recently because it seemed like the best guess to me...but it's rather ridiculous for people like me--and probably even ridiculous for people like Peter Beinart--to draw any very firm conclusions about these matters.
These are in large part matters for experts. There are people in the Pentagon and in the government who know an extraordinary amount about what's really going on, and who are as close as we have to experts about what to do in such circumstances. We live--thank god--in an age of expertise, and there's probably no better reason for me to be trying to figure out what to do in Iraq than there is for me to be trying to figure out what to do about a broken ankle or global warming.
People like us are interested in these matters, and we like sitting around talking about them...but sometimes it all seems like a joke to me. I know enough to know that I don't know what the hell is going on.
But here's the sad punchline: we can't trust the experts we have at our disposal. It's clear by now to those with eyes to see that the Bush administration extraordinarily dishonest--even for politicians. And there's good reason to suspect that the Pentagon is willing to let itself be manipulated by them. If we had a president who was intellectually and otherwise honest, the right thing to do here might very well be to say "We trust you; you've got the best info; do your best; we'll--within reason--back you up."
Sadly, we are not in a position that makes such a response feasible.
If only we were being governed by our best and brightest, I might have faith in our cause and our chances. At this point, I'd settle even for mediocrity in government. What I fear though is that we are being led not by our best and our brightest, but by our worst and our dimmest.
and
What Should We Do About It?
I'm gratified to be able to answer promptly:
I don't know.
My guess is: neither do you.
I hear people claiming that Iraq is basically Hell on Earth. I hear others claiming that it's great, the people are undaunted, the violence spectacular but rare--as in the U.S. I've come to the conclusion that I simply do not know what is going on over there. A gazillion dollars worth of people and cameras over there and we still can't tell what's up. Is it just me? Does everybody else know what's going on?
And even if I did know what was going on over there, I'm in no real position to know what to do about it. I praised Beinart's Op-Ed recently because it seemed like the best guess to me...but it's rather ridiculous for people like me--and probably even ridiculous for people like Peter Beinart--to draw any very firm conclusions about these matters.
These are in large part matters for experts. There are people in the Pentagon and in the government who know an extraordinary amount about what's really going on, and who are as close as we have to experts about what to do in such circumstances. We live--thank god--in an age of expertise, and there's probably no better reason for me to be trying to figure out what to do in Iraq than there is for me to be trying to figure out what to do about a broken ankle or global warming.
People like us are interested in these matters, and we like sitting around talking about them...but sometimes it all seems like a joke to me. I know enough to know that I don't know what the hell is going on.
But here's the sad punchline: we can't trust the experts we have at our disposal. It's clear by now to those with eyes to see that the Bush administration extraordinarily dishonest--even for politicians. And there's good reason to suspect that the Pentagon is willing to let itself be manipulated by them. If we had a president who was intellectually and otherwise honest, the right thing to do here might very well be to say "We trust you; you've got the best info; do your best; we'll--within reason--back you up."
Sadly, we are not in a position that makes such a response feasible.
If only we were being governed by our best and brightest, I might have faith in our cause and our chances. At this point, I'd settle even for mediocrity in government. What I fear though is that we are being led not by our best and our brightest, but by our worst and our dimmest.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:14 AM
10 Comments:
Careful, Winston, or tvd will be sticking you in the Church of It's Bush's Fault with the rest of us heretics.
Seriously, tho, I think we have to start looking at it in terms of "what is the least bad option." I imagine it will be some combination of withdrawing our troops, bringing in Nato, UN, or somebody else with a less inflamatory reputation to train and recruit police and we, the good ole USA, so numbly represented by Bush, will be the cash cow paying for it all, throwing billions more dollars at that country.
'Course, everybody knows we got money to spare so that's not a problem. oh wait....
In case you missed it, Mahablog presents what looks to me like a good case for saying George W. Bush Is Soft on Terrorism. Horrors! Say it ain't so, George!
My brother, who's career Army, was in Iraq for a year (starting with the first invasion, etc.) and his response was (exact quote)
"IT SUCKED"
Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright? Joycelyn Elders? John Kerry, who got worse grades than the current Idiot-in-Chief at the same school? Al Gore, who flunked out of divinity school?
I don't think this "best and brightest" thing has legs, WS.
It certainly is difficult to assess the situation in Iraq. There are those who are actually serving there who are unhappy with the reports of the "professional" mainstream media from there. So much so, they have decided to speak for themselves. Since it is they who are putting their lives on the line, they deserve a listen, I think.
A sincere inquiry might also lead one to fight his MSM addiction and seek eyewitness testimony from someone who has traveled throughout Iraq for six months or even better, someone who lives there:
"Can anyone tell me how can these terrorists be stopped from moving their zone of action to other countries if they weren't intercepted right here and right now?
There's no doubt that once Iraq falls in their hands they will start looking for other battle grounds and they will search for the "greatest Satan" in other places.
It is the American existence in Iraq that attracted them to a great extent and when there are no Americans in Iraq Al-Qaeda will not simply drop their weapons and start a normal life, they will seek other places where they can find, and kill Americans.
What I want to say here is that it is our fate to fight terrorism on our own land and we (the majority) have accepted to challenge this fate the day we abandoned Saddam and welcomed our freedom but that's not the case for you in America.
Actually we've got no other choice but to fight and keep fighting until we win over the terrorists because otherwise we'll have to submit to their will and the damage would be irreversible.
Fighting terrorism for us in Iraq is a matter of life or death so we have no choice but to keep fighting until we kill or lock in jail every one of them and we're doing this whether the world supported us or not but in case we failed, the consequences will not be confined by Iraq's borders.
You (the west) can step back and wait for the terrorists to knock on your doors at any minute or you can put your s*** together and fight them while they're thousands of miles away.
This is war, it's not a picnic and don't think that we're enjoying it and we're not expecting you to enjoy it either.
By quitting now some might think that needless losses are going to be avoided but that's-in my opinion-is a very shortsighted way of thinking because quitting now will only expose America and the rest of the world to a much greater threat.
I was talking about this to one of my friends and he described this war in an interesting way, he said "this war is much like a fierce boxing match; you punch and you get punched but even if you're stronger than your opponent you should not allow him to catch his breath at any round because he might then give you a surprising punch when the next round begins and knocks you down".
So my advice to the American politicians on both sides but especially those on the left side is: grow up, this is not the time to seek political wins and it's not the time to use other's mistakes to get some publicity.
We're facing very tough times so use your skills to find solutions.
Bottom line is, talk less, think more and do more."
An Iraqi telling us, for both their good and our own, better there than in St. Louis. It certainly does suck, Mark.
Well, I've seen those sorts of reports tvd, but as always I lack your blind faith. Troops tend to be in favor of whatever action they're in. Many say things are good and it's worth it, but many don't in this case.
And the quote you included proves nothing. Whether or not it's "fight 'em there or fight 'em here" is one of the things Iraqis are in no better position to judge than we are. It's probably a stupid strategy actually, but maybe not.
And as for the "best and the brightest"...there are two ways to be a 'C' student, and I'll be you know what they are... Though I've said here before that I don't think it's so much that the president is stupid. He's inarticulate, which means little to me. But he's intellectually dishonest and incurious. And he has the worst intellectual vice anyone can have--he's incapable of admitting error.
Anyway, I don't think I've ever praised Kerry's intellect. Gore, however, is very intelligent, curious, and intellectually honest. We'd not be in this mess if the election had not, in essence, been stolen from him.
Of course you must admit that it's likely that the Republicans would have attempted to impeach him if 9/11 had happened and he'd been on vacation right after receiving a memo titled...what was it now?
tvd, your "someone who lives there" also says: It doesn't really matter if Saddam had connections with Al-Qaeda prior to 2003 or not and it does not matter if he had the ability to attack the west with WMDs or not.
'Course I'm biased, but I think this guy has a tin ear for American politics. Probably because of all the rightie blogs that he reads. It matters very much to us if Saddam had WMD's or connections with AQ, because if he didn't then our President misled us and knowing how much we can trust the highest elected leader of our country is very important to us. Considering that for most Iraqis the poosibility of trusting Saddam never was a live issue, I can see how they might not understand the way we feel about it.
And there at the end, when he directs his advice to "especially those on the left side"--well I wonder if Rove's little performance in NY has shown him that it's not the left that is most concerned with squeezing a polical advantage out of this.
And as he says, bottom line THINK MORE. That's exactly the problem, there's no reason to believe that Bush feels a need to think more. If "more" is even the right word--I doubt that he ever gave it any thought at all, beyond "Oboy, I want to be a wartime commmander in chief in the worst way and if I take out this guy then I'm even better than my Dad"
I try to shy away from armchair psychology, Duke. A biographer of them both said the difference between Nixon and Ike was that Nixon was obsessed by motives, Ike didn't care. Me either. We know what talks and walks, which is why I don't care about "admitting mistakes" in a C-in-C. Such things, especially with today's set of enemies, are seen as weakness to be exploited.
That said, let me note I'm very very down on George H.W. Bush. He left the Iraqi rebels out to dry, and Saddam filled his mass graves with them. The damage was near-irreparable, and is mainly responsible, in my view, for the Iraqis' current reticence to wholeheartedly get involved in fighting their own mortal enemy, militant Islam (and the Ba'athists.)
If I call for more unanimity (even with teeth clenched) for the war effort and the message that we won't crap out on them again, this is why. The better lights of the Democratic Party are beginning to arrive at that conclusion. Maybe.
As for Iraqi or milblogs, I read everything and believe nothing. I get Harper's and NR, why not? Besides, of greatest interest is what is not said. What is not said is that the Iraqi people as a whole want us out.
(WS, I have a high opinion of everyone who's ever been a nominee for president, regardless of party. Except Al Gore. We dodged one there.)
Prof. WS---Is there a epistemological school whose inquiry derives from what is not said or done, one of negative inference, perhaps?
In this, the age of sheep, brainwashing, propaganda, lies, and massive distrust of the fruits of the Information Age, it seems to me the way to go.
y'know, tvd, this can be taken two totally different ways: What is not said is that the Iraqi people as a whole want us out.
Your idea of "admitting mistakes" appears to be on the order of a poker player announcing his own 'tells' and giving everybody else an advantage over him. When I use those words, I'm usually think along the lines of "this guy knows what he did wrong and he's working on coming up with something better." It's not armchair psychology to say "I don't think this guy gets it yet."
The better lights of the Democratic party felt that way from th beginning, until Bush made it clear that only true believers need apply. When criticism is ruled out of court, honest citizens are redesignated as traitors
To pick out one strand of this discussion:
Do motives matter:
1. Not in assessing what we should do now in Iraq. We're there, and we have to treat this just like we would if we had ended up there legitimately. What we need is results; we need to focus on the future.
2. They do matter, however, in assessing President Bush and his administration. Quite obviously so. Motives matter far more than results in this regard. They'd like to convince us otherwise for obvious reasons, tho...
On a related note: I'm getting really tired of hearing conservatives berate liberals about how we've all got to pull together behind the president. He lied us into the war, conducted it incompetently, and is pushing a radical agenda at home. He's doing everything in his power to divide us as a nation...and then berates us when we actually end up divided.
More on that last point later. I think I'm getting a little too made about current events to disuss them intelligently anymore.
Oh, and the postmodern left: not powerful. More powerful than I'd like, but not a pressing problem right now.
Dunno what you mean by "the postmodern center"...
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