I have been trying not to write about Iraq but things look so dire now, I just cannot help myself. This goes way beyond our own partisan politics; Thousands of people are dying and our intervention is largely to blame.
Armies are good at one thing: blowing shit up and killing people. OK, that is two things but you get the point. Was there ever a "military solution" to building democracy in Iraq?
Government is built on trust, not bombs. People have to trust each other and the system enough to be willing to give up personal liberty for the sake of the community. People need to trust that the government will protect them from internal and external threats. And the government needs to deliver and give people a reason to look forward to the future.
As badly as we need a stable government in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has never been clear to me that we had a plan that could achieve it. We have been trying for FOUR years and if you read any reports of life in Iraq, it is truly horrifying.
In fact, conditions are so bad that reporters cannot even report on conditions because they too are being kidnapped and killed. There is nothing we Americans can compare this to and our media sources have done a very poor job of keeping us informed because of political pressure.
On one hand, we dont need to be informed because Iraq was never a threat to us and there never were Iraqi terrorists (9/11 were Saudi Arabian, not Iraqi). On the other hand, we made a very public show of getting involved and hundreds of thousands of people are dead, most of them are civilians. Whatever our intentions, much of the world looks at this enormous tragedy and blames us.
It is unclear if the President is ready to really make changes but at least there is a possibility. I just feel terrible for the families in Iraq that have to wait.
What makes things worse is that at this point, it is not clear what we can do. Could France have written our Constitution after our own revolution from English rule? Maybe the UN could help keep the peace but it seems like the glue that binds a country has to come from within the country, not from another country. Empires, like the British or Soviet Union, could extend force to hold countries together artificially but that wont work in a "democracy".
So now what? Will we raise a draft and a war tax and send more troops in to "win"? (Do we even agree on what winning looks like?) Will we pull troops out and let the Iraqis find their own "political solution"? The "democractic" government we helped install is both weak and corrupt. Whatever your feelings about going into Iraq, it is very unclear what to do now. All we do know is that after 4 years of trying, Iraq is a deadly place and getting worse by the day.
U.S. Shifts Onus To Iraqis to Find Political Solution
With Few Military Options, Timeline Set to Meet Goals; 'They've Got to Do More'
October 25, 2006
Wall Street Journal
With few military options left to counter the violence across Iraq, top U.S. officials are shifting more of the onus onto Baghdad's beleaguered political leaders to broker compromises they hope might stem the rising bloodshed.
In a sign that Washington is turning up pressure on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to act, U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington yesterday said progress on resolving Iraq's ethnic and religious rifts must come soon.
The focus on Baghdad's fledgling government follows the U.S. military's admission last week that its four-month-old plan to secure the Iraqi capital by concentrating U.S. and Iraqi forces there hasn't worked as hoped. It also comes amid congressional-election campaigns in which Republicans and Democrats are pressing the Bush administration to radically change its approach in Iraq.
But little in Iraq over the past three years offers reason for optimism that the renewed pressure on Mr. Maliki will produce better results. Over that period, the U.S. has tried various military tactics -- having U.S. troops take the lead, having them step back from major cities, inserting them deep into urban conflict zones or having them stay on the perimeters -- only to see the security situation worsen steadily. At the same time, American officials have been disappointed in Mr. Maliki, considering him too passive in addressing Iraq's deep political rifts and too timid in confronting the militias that increasingly pose serious security problems.
