Retroactive Justification

A few weeks ago, the search for weapons of mass destruction was called off and nobody cared. It wasn’t really a story. The Presidential inauguration was coming up, the Iraqi elections were in various stages of disarray, and Iraq itself was getting merrily car-bombed back to the Stone Age. There were much more important things going on in the world than the Bush administration’s oh-so-quiet admission that the original pretense for going to war in Iraq had failed.

I noticed, and so did the Daily Show, which has transitioned from an entertaining and goofy way to spend a half-hour, to my sole source of political gallows humor. Of course, Jon Stewart was able to spin this into something funny, but I can’t. We went to war for one reason and, instead of admitting we were wrong, the administration and the America right simply created a new reason for the same war.

I grant that it must be unspeakably difficult to walk in front of America and say, “I screwed up. We went to war to find nonexistent weapons and thousands of American soldiers died. Oops. Sorry. Won’t happen again.” But while the war in Iraq is a tough issue for conservatives, the war on terror isn’t. Solution? Make them one and the same. Iraq, prior to our arrival, was a terrorist backwater- when you start killing clerics and instituting a secular regime, al Qaeda won’t exactly be banging down the door to lend you a hand.

Of course, AFTER we arrived, we created a cause celebré for the Islamic radicalist movement. Regardless of who had been running the show before us, al Qaeda affiliates had a new battleground on which to kill Americans- conveniently across the street from their spiritual base of Saudi Arabia. So yeah, Iraq is now a front in the war on terror- one which we, by wrongfully invading a country, created. Oops.

What upsets me most about neoconservative foreign policy, is its inherent fear of showing weakness. If you break down the neocon ideology, they are fully convinced that we need to be such a strong, unstoppable force that no terrorist group will dare to challenge us- and that we should use that force to influence the spread of “freedom and democracy throughout the world.” There’s a little truth to that- very few democracies have bred terrorist cells- but to paraphrase an Iraqi man in Fallujah this week, people don’t usually appreciate a democracy that arrives on the back of a tank.

Today’s American foreign policy is being dictated by the same mentality that convinced the middle-school bully to beat up the smaller kids. Theoretically, fear should inspire respect, and to the people who are instilling fear, it looks like it’s working. But a foreign policy that instills respect is infinitely more complex and subtle, and requires an approach to the Iraq problem that the Bush administration is unwilling to adopt and totally incapable of implementing.

It requires us to support the Iraqi government by working better with its neighbors- including Iran- to protect the viability of the fledgling democracy. It requires a broad-based foreign policy with a conciliatory message to bring in more support from European and Asian countries who want little to do with Iraq. But most importantly, it requires Americans to leave. Soon.

Paradoxically, American forces are the only thing that is keeping the Iraqi resistance viable. There are two primary types of Iraqi insurgents- Shiite religious zealots in the southern regions, and Sunni fighters in the Baghdad area, who draw their support from regime loyalists and foreign, al-Qaeda-linked fighters. Currently, they have a common enemy- the American imperialists. The American Humvee and helicopter are targets that any militant can shoot at, without angering the local population. However, when insurgents kill Iraqi police, National Guardsmen and civilians, Iraqis tend to blame the Americans for the death, saying Iraqis would not kill their own countrymen.

I’m not advocating leaving tomorrow, and I’m not advocating a departure simply because Americans are dying. We made this mess and we need to clean it up. But there is going to be a civil war in Iraq when we leave, no matter how strong the government is. The Sunni minority is better-armed and battle-hardened, and the Shiites have suffered for a long time under Sunni repression and are looking for revenge. This battle will happen, no matter what. When the Americans leave, and these sides can’t make common cause anymore, they’re going to war.

Islamic militants are fond of telling the civilian population that the Americans came to conquer Iraq and take its oil. That may have been the Bush administration’s idea- cheap oil from Iraq and convenient military bases in the Middle East. But even Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld can tell that American troops need to leave Iraq. So they need to start now, by publicly announcing the beginning of the American departure from Iraq. They don’t need to pull out more than a hundred troops or so, and they can take longer to withdraw the main body of the force. They just need to make it clear that we plan to leave, and leave for good.

But once the Americans start to leave, the fight between Sunni militants and Shiites will begin. That’s when the first major challenge to the truly independent Iraqi government will unfold. No matter how much progress American troops make against the Hydra-like insurgency, the Iraqi government will lack legitimacy until they can protect their people without foreign- especially Western- help.

The fact is that we went to war to find weapons of mass destruction, and we found ourselves in a country without them. So the Bush White House invented a new reason- bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. He claimed that’s why we went to war originally, which was false. But he was telling the truth when he said that American troops are fighting for a free and secure Iraq. I just wish he would add the obvious reason WHY American kids are dying to protect Iraqi freedoms.

The American military, at this point, is fighting a war to go home, and that's about it.