Set aside for a moment the increasing shrillness of the releases I get from antiwar groups. More and more, I find myself having trouble understanding what these folks actually want the United States to do. Take this release today, for instance:
Americans Against Escalation in Iraq
http://www.NoIraqEscalation.comMEDIA ADVISORY FOR Contact: Moira Mack
Thursday, June 14, 2007 202-261-2383"IRAQ SUMMER" BEGINS TODAY
Nearly 100 Organizers Begin Work
in Key Congressional Districts
Coalition Turns Up Heat on "Endless War" RepublicansWASHINGTON, DC – “Iraq Summer” begins today as Americans Against Escalation in Iraq prepares to dispatch nearly 100 organizers to the home states and districts of Republican Senators and Representatives who have opposed setting a timeline to end the US war in Iraq. The program is modeled on the “Freedom Summer” civil rights project. Organizers will be in fifteen states from Nevada to Maine, a total of 40 congressional districts.
Organizers will spend ten weeks in their assigned districts working with local veterans and advocacy groups to pressure targeted lawmakers to reject President Bush’s Iraq policy and instead vote to bring a responsible end to the war. A barrage of events, letter writing campaigns, endorsement efforts, and local legislative events are planned for each targeted state or district, building to large nationwide rallies at the end of August. The rallies come just in advance of anticipated votes on the war and the so-called “surge.”
With no real progress expected on the ground in Iraq, AAEI aims to turn growing nation-wide opposition to the war into intense political pressure to end the war responsibly. By mobilizing thousands of outraged citizens, AAEI will demonstrate that continued support for the war in Iraq has political consequences for those representatives seeking re-election in 2008. A recently released New York Times/CBS poll indicates that 63% of the public wants a timetable for withdrawal in 2008.
“Opposition to the war in Iraq is reaching a boiling point and this summer Republican members of Congress will be feeling the heat from their constituents,” said Moira Mack, spokeswoman for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq. “As more and more rural and suburban voters turn against President Bush’s Iraq war policies, the President’s supporters in Congress will be facing their own political vulnerability. We will force Members of Congress to make a choice: continue to support President Bush’s wildly unpopular policy of endless war in Iraq and face the political consequences or side with the majority of Americans and vote to responsibly end the war.”
Most of the organizers in the program are local to the regions where they will be working, and are a mix of veterans, military family members, students and community organizers. They gather this weekend in Washington, DC, for four days of training and planning.
AAEI will be holding a press conference call to officially kick off the program.
###
I had to write back to Moira Mack to ask:
Moira, reading your release, I have a question.
Saying you oppose "endless war" suggests that you propose to end that war somehow.
What is your plan? Since you don’t think the surge or anything like it will bring the fighting to an end, what action do you propose to keep the various factions in Iraq from killing people?
I’ve been wondering about that for years, but the question is taking on a new urgency as more and more people say things like that, things which make no sense.
The "endlessness" of this war is not a policy; it’s a fact. The issue is, what do we do in the face of that fact?
And no, having a "timeline" is not a plan, unless the plan is to get the jihadist insurgents and Sunni and Shi’a combatants to agree to the timeline, which would be a neat trick.
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Stop calling it a war and instead increase the resources going into our intelligence agencies to hunt down, infiltrate, and kill the terrorists. Work from the top down instead of the bottom up approach that gets our soldiers killed.
9/11 was a result of an “army” of 20 radical Islamists. It wasn’t Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t Hitler invading Poland. It was a bunch of Saudi’s with box cutters who were allowed to learn how to fly jets, walked through airport security, and had easy access to the cockpits. Do you understand there would be no “War on Terror” if the airport security had worked that day?
Why is it so hard to understand that 150,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq may not be perceived by everyone in the region as benevolent liberators? Why are we so arrogant to believe that we can resolve religious sectarian issues that have existed for centuries by our attempts to export American democracy? If this is a war, why won’t Congress declare it and why won’t the President approach it as such by asking for shared sacrifice among the American people? Because it’s about politics, oil, and funneling boatloads of money to defense contractors… endlessly.
OK, call it a “thingie.” How do WE end the “thingie?”
In other words, please don’t retreat into semantics or historical analogies, or knocking down historical analogies that your interlocutor didn’t mention to begin with. Largely because this has gotten so tied up in partisanship, there’s altogether too much setting-up of straw men and knocking them down already.
There’s this thingie going on. Lots of people killing lots of other people for a lot of different reasons.
How does our setting a timeline stop the thingie? And if that doesn’t end the endless thingie, what does?
Anyway, I’m not the one who called in an “endless war.” I’m reacting to someone else — someone with whom I disagree — calling it that. But as I say, if the word upsets you too much for us to be able to have a calm discussion, we’ll call it an “endless thingie” instead.
Oh, and Doug — do you understand that if the airport security (as it was then understood) had worked that day, it would have failed on another? (Just as it will fail again, because measures prompt countermeasures, in a cycle that doesn’t end until the supply of people who want to kill diminishes.) And do you also understand that the war had been going on for some years before that? We’re not talking about the kind of Clausewitzian, set-piece battle sort of war that Patton and Rommel fought, but the kind that we are actually involved in here — the low-intensity, asymmetrical kind.
If the twin towers didn’t fall, we would not be in Iraq – maybe Afghanistan, not Iraq. You can play your own fantasy games about what might have happened, but it’s pure speculation.
A timeline for withdrawal from Iraq would not raise or lower the threat against the U.S. from terrorist organizations. Remaining in Iraq fosters anti-American sentiment that spawns more Al Queda recruiting. Can you at least agree that there are more Al Queda in Iraq than there were four years ago? Coincidence?
And I’m wondering… does anyone else know how many suicide bombs were going off and killing innocent Iraqi’s prior to our invasion? You think the families of those victims understand that is the price to be paid for America’s security?
Let’s say it’s entirely our fault. After all, oppressive regimes are very good at keeping order (think Yugoslavia during the Cold War), and they certainly had one over there.
So how is it right, having started this chain of events, for the world’s most powerful country to walk away and leave the Iraqi people in the crossfire?
And I’m sorry, it doesn’t protect a single Iraqi for you to say, “I was against it all along!” or “I just don’t want to see it on my TV anymore.” What’s happening is happening.
A U.S. withdrawal does not end what’s going on, whether you call it a war or any other word you choose. Oh, we can discuss marginal effects. For instance, if the American MEDIA go away, terrorists lose their biggest audience, and you might see fewer pointless suicide bombings. But if American troops leave a force vacuum, the motivation for all the more pragmatic factions, Sunni and Shia, to fight ever harder increases dramatically. So let’s just call it a wash, since there’s no way to quantify it for sure.
In any case, no sensible person would think for a moment that the killing would stop.
I tried to warn you about what was happening, but you wouldn’t listen. Do you remember the following that I sent to you (and that you replied to)? I saved this document on 4/13/03 (right after the invasion).
Isn’t it amazing how the media has portrayed the war? If you have been feeling a little down lately, don’t worry, you are not depressed because of anything that you’ve done, you’ve (we’ve) been psych-oped-and we are not alone. The most incredible aspect of this war, in my opinion, is how the media was so successfully manipulated, and how people who opposed the war were vilified when all we wanted was no war to begin with. We haven’t been responsible for death one, and yet we are the bad guys.
Excuse me, but even though I am a liberal social democrat, the media can kiss my ass!
You know, I spent a lot of time in my youth studying WWII (all the men in my family fought in WWII) and I grew up in a military family within a military neighborhood. I knew a lot about war before I ever joined the military, and I’ve been to a lot of places and have seen a lot of propaganda in my time, but never anything on the scale that I’ve just witnessed.
I have ZERO intentions of apologizing for opposing the war. I’m not sad, I’m mad as hell about being lied to on a major scale.
Let me review just a few of the lies that were perpetrated against the American public here:
Lie: The war was about liberating the Iraqi people from an evil dictator. The war was about WMDs and keeping them out of the hands of terrorists. We have no permanent military goals or oil interests in Iraq.
Truth: The war was about enacting a new aggressive global police policy against anybody that we don’t like, and Iraq is just the tip of the iceberg. Granted, Saddam and his buddies are evil, but during their acts of debauchery, I don’t guess they ever suspected that they were going to be made examples of, especially since we (our CIA) helped to install Saddam to begin with (remember Saddam’s reign of terror on the communists within the Baath party-he got the names of the communists from the CIA), and since we gave this lunatic chemical weapons technology to use against the Iranians. The administration hawks wanted to set up a permanent military force in the Gulf region before September 11, but Sept 11 gave them the needed political support. ALL of the contracts for rebuilding Iraq are for American companies, despite the protestations of our best ally, Tony Blair.
Lie: “Shock and Awe” was intended to make he Iraqis fear our power so much that they would run out into the street and give up before there was any significant bloodshed.
Truth: “Shock and Awe” was a worldwide media event that was really intended for consumption in countries like Syria, Iran, North Korea, and China (and Europe?) and to be viewed by any other real or imagined potential adversary. “Shock and Awe” had no military value whatsoever-the majority of the Iraqi forces never saw it because they were many miles outside of Baghdad when it happened. It didn’t severely affect the people of Baghdad because they knew from the beginning that we weren’t going to bomb civilian populations. It didn’t affect the Iraqi government because they were safely below ground in bunkers underneath the civilian sections of town. It did however scare the hell out of a lot of people watching TV. The message of “Shock and Awe” was as follows: “You see this potential adversaries, if you get out of line, then this is going to happen to you! We can blast you to Kingdom Come to within a square meter of where you are standing, 24-7, and you’ll never know what hit you unless we want you to.”
Lie: We didn’t calculate enemy soldier casualties during the invasion (“liberation”) of Baghdad. The best estimate of casualties was 2000-3000 Iraqis killed when we advanced from the Baghdad airport to the city.
Truth: The Pentagon did do casualty estimates, but they didn’t release the figures because they thought it would increase opposition to the war. The only reference that I have heard on this subject was to from two generals on FOX who didn’t want to reveal their Pentagon sources. The bulk of the casualties came when we decimated three Republican Guard divisions outside of Baghdad. The absolute lowest casualty figure was 10,000, and the probable number killed was 25,000. If you know a little bit about statistics, then you can surmise that mean number killed was 25,000 with a standard deviation of 5,000. Another way of saying this is, that there is a 68% chance that we killed between 20,000 and 30,000 Republican Guard soldiers before we even entered Baghdad. The Pentagon DID much publicize that we killed two to three thousand paramilitaries when leaving the airport to go into Baghdad-and that is the number that the media picked up on. So on cable and in editorials you have undoubtedly heard that there were “thousands” of Iraqi combatant casualties; the truth is that there were TENS OF THOUSANDS of Iraqi combatant casualties. I bet that countrywide, we killed at least 50,000 Iraqi combatants! Oh yeah, the Republican Guards (not the KGB like Special Republican Guards inside of Baghdad) are analogous to our best soldiers (i.e., 101st and 82nd Airborne, and Green Berets). Saddam didn’t even trust them enough to let them enter Baghdad (for fear of a coup), so they must not have had a big role in oppressing the people. Somehow we have to remember here, that WE attacked IRAQ, not the other way around. I’m elated that Saddam and his murderous thugs are gone, but did we have to kill this many people to accomplish this? -NO.
Lie: The administration did everything possible to avoid war.
Truth: The administration did everything possible to cajole, browbeat, and threaten the UN Security council into supporting the war, and when it didn’t do it, the administration acted unilaterally.
Lie: The only way to effect “regime change” was to invade Iraq.
Truth: The Pentagon was only concerned about 55 senior members of the Baath party who controlled the country. As evidenced by our pinpoint bombing, we could have easily taken out these people with just a few informants on the ground and by using a Stealth Bomber without ever mentioning a war. Of course, a civil war within Iraq would have soon ensued if we had done this, and the lower level Baath party bureaucrats would have probably won over the Shiites, but we didn’t do it. Why? Go to the next lie.
Lie: The Shiites are welcoming us with open arms because they are ready to be participants in secular self-government.
Truth: the Shiites have up to this point welcomed us with open arms because we got rid of their archenemy, Saddam. This cozy relationship will last at least a couple of weeks. The Shiites don’t want a secular government; they want an Iranian style religious government. We didn’t take out the top 55 Baath party members because we were not sure if the remaining Iraqi leaders could beat the Shiites in a civil war. If you have noticed, all of the major Iraqi ministry buildings were not bombed because we intended that the Iraqi bureaucracy would actually continue to run the day to day activities under the administration of an ostensibly democratic, puppet government. If we allowed a true democratic government to take root, the Shiites would take power and then create a theocracy, and Iraq would become in effect a satellite of Iran.
Lie: The invasion of Iraq will lessen terrorism and promote democracy in the Gulf region. Eventually, European liberal democracies will come around to our way of thinking.
Truth: This invasion is probably going to increase terrorism because a lot of enmity against the US in the Middle East has to do with what most Arabs see as American colonialism (and secularism) and supposed favoritism to Israel. Most Arabs identify more with Sunni Muslims (the people of the Iraqi aristocracy) more than they do with the Shiites (Persian branch of Islam) and the Kurds. We are not going to promote real democracy in Iraq and most Arabs know this based on what we have done in the past and based on the fact that most of the Shiites don’t want the kind of secular democracy that we ostensibly want to promote. As for European governments coming around to our way of thinking, it is probably not going to happen, especially considering that France, Germany, and Russia were meeting today to insist that the UN take control of the Iraqi government rather than the US.
It is worth noting here that the European Union met together last week, and one can bet that they are talking about their own security arrangements. I suppose that they are discussing their future participation in NATO and whether or not they should develop their own continental defense arrangements (minus the US and Britain).
I have to go now. This war was a major mistake. We could have accomplished some good things if we had stayed within the UN, but we had to go it alone, and we have alienated everybody. Thanks for reading this paper.
Mark
And do you also understand that the war had been going on for some years before that?
Wrong. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq had NOT been going on before that. Iraq was not a “front” in the “war on terror” until WE blundered in there and turned it into a big terrorist theme park.
The invasion you advocated for has created the condition that you now claims obligates us to stay in Iraq forever. The longer we keep a military presence there, the worse things will get.
I am truly sorry that America’s reckless, stupid, idiotic actions in invading Iraq have unleashed the destruction and human suffering that they have, and I do think this country has an obligation to rebuild and reconstruct Iraq as much as we can, but at some point we need to face the fact that our military occupation of the country is part of the problem.
There’s this thingie going on. Lots of people killing lots of other people for a lot of different reasons.
How does our setting a timeline stop the thingie? And if that doesn’t end the endless thingie, what does?
I’m speechless.
Doug –
The actionable intel in Iraq is coming from the intel assets embedded in US units and just regular grunts gaining the trust of the locals for information that can be analyzed for action. We have military and other forces in about sixty nations providing training, logistics support, and guidance and collecting intelligence on the ground to buttress this endless war. Think about Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia; there have been other, smaller scale actions like that to eject and hunt down jihadis.
Top down intel is stuff like the controversial Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) where the big SIGINT vacuum cleaner and other technical means suck up everything in the hope that analysts can apply clever techniques to pinpoint those about to do something. We still have shortages of trusted linguists and in lots of cases probably can’t isolate networks because the jihadis change websites and cell phones and other communications links frequently.
The battle for Iraq aside, this is as much a war as the Cold War was. We need to do much more than contain because the jihadis operate across borders. (For brevity’s sake I refer to both the radical Shia [mainly Iranian backed forces like Quds and Hizbollah] and the fundamentalist Sunni al Qaeda franchise as “jihadis”. The Muslim Brotherhood has been much more patient, but it’s been slowly coming around to al Qaeda’s ways.) Like the commies, they aim to subvert and guide teams along that route. But they also act wherever and whenever they believe they can score big points, whether in New York City, London, Bali, or Madrid. Both Hizbollah and al Qaeda have folks here at home ready to act when their respective masters so order.
The Cold War was thought to be endless because it was ideological, as is this one, and, in the minds of the multiculturalists, one ideology is as good as another. Besides, the commies meant well: as soon as the West was defeated, communism would thrive. What ended the war was the rather sudden collapse of the intellectual and economic underpinnings of the ideology that destroyed the faith its backers had in it. Communism just didn’t work, everybody finally admitted that the West had a stronger economy and greater freedoms, so that when the bosses finally lost faith, let borders open, and did not order that folks rushing toward the Berlin checkpoints be shot, there was a great sigh of relief.
But the lesson in the endless war, in addition to employing active measures, is to fight the ideology, and that’s proved difficult. First, should Bush or anyone else mention “radical Islamic fundamentalism” as a problem, the press, politicians, and concerned citizens go nuts. If we can’t agree on a label for the enemy, it’s gonna take some time to show any success. As an aside, I note that one may make fun of Christian fundamentalists, deeply religious groups like Opus Dei, Jews, Mormons, Buddhists, Hindus, Seventh Day Adventists, and Zoroastrians without fear of significant criticism, any type of retribution, or bodily harm, yet more and more folks are afraid to criticize any aspect of Islam in public. I guess they took Theo van Gogh’s lesson to heart.
Next, the politics have gotten wacky. I don’t think that Bush leaving office will end the efforts that some politicians and media outlets are willing to take to end the war. Besides the TSP, the loyal opposition has taken great pride in disclosing secret prisons, both covert and classified overhead surveillance system (there are even websites dedicated to tracking the birds, providing overflight schedules when they can), and other intelligence methods and sources.
Even government agencies have gotten either stupid or risk averse. Take the Transportation Safety Administration’s dress code for air marshals that made them stand out on flights, or how about the role that gummint lawyers are playing in preventing active measures. We’ve solved the Hellfire-Predator dilemma by putting a lawyer in a chair beside the operator to authorize a shot at bad guys. But when someone comes up with the brilliant idea of sneaking booby-trapped detonators into Iraq to kill the dozen or so known IED-makers, the CIA general counsel’s office kills the idea, citing lack of authority.
Finally, whether your view is that we outspent the stinking commies or that our economic system was simply more dynamic and productive, it was in large measure economics that killed communist systems. In this war it’s not a battle of one nation’s economy against another because we’re generally not fighting countries. But we are fighting an enemy that has more money than Midas, and it’s our money! In his remark on rope retailers, Marx had the idea right, but the customer wrong.
The expanded question is a good one: How do you win an endless war when mentioning the enemy’s name is impolite, can’t keep your techniques secret, won’t employ a lot of the effective tactics your smart folks dream up, and can’t bankrupt them?
That should do it in a generation or two. It’s not endless, just long and hard.
How long would we have fought to defeat Germany and Japan 65 years ago?
Ask the wrong question and the answer one gets is never right…the question should be: How long are we prepared to live with the consequences if we lose this thingie? Ed
I’m not sure that the thread is really going in a productive direction. I’m sure that Moira Mack didn’t answer Brad’s question, because he’s not in her target audience. She should treat his question with the scornful silence it deserves, because she’s not interested in winning over the few remaining dead-enders and 28-percenters; she’s interested in mobilizing the great majority of Americans who want out of the war to exert themselves, to do what they can to force the government to conform to the will of the people.
We don’t have to persuade anybody. We have won the battle of persuasion. It is now time to push the ragtag remnants of the opposition out of our way.
Obviously the issue isn’t winning over, or even paying any attention to, people like Brad, Mike, Ed, and their ilk. The only thing – besides fear – that motivates them is a desire to avoid admitting they were wrong.
Those of us – the great majority – who aren’t consumed with fear of al Qaeda, who aren’t willing to let al Qaeda dominate our lives and dictate our actions, have to take control of our country.
So yeah, you should check out the “Iraq summer” and if you think it’s the right way to go, you should do what you can to move it forward.
The outcome in Iraq isn’t going to be pretty, and everyone longs to think that there’s something we can do to avert disaster, but we can’t clean up the mess we’ve made by just doing more of what we’re doing. The “surge” has now clearly failed, what are we doing to do – “surge” some more? The Iraqi people want us out, the American people want us out, our presence is making things worse, it’s time to start getting out, start repairing our country and enlisting help in the international community, and maybe we can still avoid a genocide.
But don’t feel the need to waste time answering Brad, Mike, Ed, and the few remaining Bush supporters and war supporters. We’ve got more important things to do.
Well said, Hal. I’m enjoying the events in Gaza as a preview of Iraq when we pull out.
BTW, I’m putting together a T-shirt order for the one that reads “War Against Radical Islam, 1979-2007, 2nd Place “
The men’s wife-beater model is available in sizes S-XXL. The women’s burqa version is a one-size-doesn’t-fit-all.
Yeah, the Iraq / DC summer is already heating up:
Brad, you’ve hit rock bottom with this one. This whole stupid, failed, immoral, quagmire of a war needs to be stopped. The people trying to stop this are heros. Our involvement is killing people including Americans for absolutely no reason. You can’t even string together a few cooherent sentences to justify continuing. All you do is talk about not abandoning the Iraqi people. Somehow you take comfort in that though, even though it’s utter nonsense.
It’s laughable when you call the true American patriots “shrill”. It’s insulting to say we should stay there so we don’t “abandon” the Iraqi people. And don’t even get me started with the whole historical analogy thing. Just check out ed’s nonsense about how long would we have been willing to fight the Nazis. We don’t have to ask that. We fought the Nazis for less than 4 years. If that’s the benchmark war then we should be coming home NOW.
Fact is Brad, most of the shrillness is coming from the 28 percent minority who continue to support this thing. Too bad congress hasn’t figured that out yet.
Hal, your point is well taken that we should ignore the dead-enders like Brad who continue to preach sacrifice from others while they and their families remain safe at home. But it’s this small minority that continue to make endless war possible. Without their constant fear-mongering rants maybe the message from the majority of Americans would be heeded. They need to be called out on the nonsense they continue to utter.
Bud, I don’t say we should necessarily ignore the dead-enders, but I do think we should ignore their arguments. By refuting their arguments, you validate them; you imply that they at least have enough credence to be worthy of consideration and refutation.
You should ask questions like “why should we listen to you”, and make similar remarks that suggest that the dead-enders have totally discredited themselves by now, but the actual substance of their arguments doesn’t deserve any more response than “talk to the hand”.
The point to make isn’t that they’re wrong, it’s gone beyond that. The point to make is that they shouldn’t be listened to at all.
Hal,
Paraphrasing that sage political oracle, Dick Cheney, it would seem that the dead-enders are in the “last throes” of being able to push the pro-war agenda.
I’m afraid we’re stuck with this war until at least September. Many of the pro-war people have designated that month as decisive. Also, by then the 2008 campaign season will make continued support of the Iraq quagmire politically untenable. With a huge number of Republicans up for re-election election day becomes a hard and fast deadline that can no longer be ignored.
This is the sad last post from “Riverbend”,a young Iraqi woman who started an award winning blog(Baghdad Burning)in August of 2003-
Thursday,April 26,2007
The Great Wall of Segregation…
…Which is the wall the current Iraqi government is building(with the support and guidance of the Americans).It’s a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest’Sunni’area in Baghdad-let no one say the Americans are not building anything.According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up,it will ‘protect’ A’adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn’t empty of Sunnis.
The wall,of course,will protect no one.I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said,”Oh look- we’re just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here-it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!”And yet,it will also be difficult to get out.
The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart.Promoting and supporting civil war isn’t enough, apparently-Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs,ayatollahs,and Vichy leaders.It’s time for America to physically divide and conquer-like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today.This way,they can continue chasing Sunnis out of “Shia areas” and Shia out of “Sunni areas”.
I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals(they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq).They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined,sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict.They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation.They go on and on about Iraq’s history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that.I hate that a handful of expats who haven’t been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.
I remember Baghdad before the war-one could live anywhere.We didn’t know what our neighbors were-we didn’t care.No one asked about religion or sect.No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic:are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward.Our lives revolve around it now.Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.
On a personal note,we’ve finally decided to leave.I guess I’ve known we would be leaving for a while now.We discussed it as a family dozens of times.At first,someone would suggest it tentatively because,it was just a preposterous idea-leaving ones home and extended family-leaving ones country-and to what? To where?
Since last summer,we had been discussing it more and more.It was only a matter of time before what began as a suggestion-a last case scenario-soon took on solidity and developed into a plan.For the last couple of months,it has only been a matter of logistics.Plane or car? Jordan or Syria? Will we all leave together as a family? Or will it be only my brother and I at first?
After Jordan or Syria-where then? Obviously,either of those countries is going to be a transit to something else.They are both overflowing with Iraqi refugees,and every single Iraqi living in either country is complaining of the fact that work is difficult to come by,and getting a residency is even more difficult.There is also the little problem of being turned back at the border.Thousands of Iraqis aren’t being let into Syria or Jordan-and there are no definite criteria for entry,the decision is based on the whim of the border patrol guard checking your passport.
An airplane isn’t necessarily safer,as the trip to Baghdad International Airport is in itself risky and travelers are just as likely to be refused permission to enter the country(Syria and Jordan)if they arrive by airplane.And if you’re wondering why Syria or Jordan,because they are the only two countries that will let Iraqis in without a visa.Following up visa issues with the few functioning embassies or consulates in Baghdad is next to impossible.
So we’ve been busy.Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable?We,like many Iraqis,are not the classic refugees-the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice.We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare-stay and wait and try to survive.
On the one hand,I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else-as yet unknown-is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives.We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind.Can I bring along a stuffed animal I’ve had since the age of four?Is there room for E.’s guitar?What clothes do we take? Summer clothes?The winter clothes too?What about my books?What about the CDs,the baby pictures?
The problem is that we don’t even know if we’ll ever see this stuff again.We don’t know if whatever we leave,including the house,will be available when and if we come back.There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country,simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it,is overwhelming.It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally,we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends…And to what?
It’s difficult to decide which is more frightening-car bombs and militias,or having to leave everything you know and love,to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.
bud, here’s the thing on “shrillness”…
What I notice, in this group’s releases as well as in others, is an increasingly emotional indignation of the sort one associates with the stamping of feet in frustration. It’s like, “Doggone it! Polls show that people don’t want to see this on TV any more, and we want it stopped right NOW! We want it to disappear! Don’t you KNOW we want that? We WANT it! So why isn’t it HAPPENING!?!”
It’s as though they believe this whole thing must be rigged or something, because they WON the popularity contest, which was a big turnaround for anti-war people because they had felt lonely and isolated for a time after 9/11. Now, the polls are on OUR SIDE, dammit, so why aren’t the troops home yet?
Well, the reason why is that even the antiwar members of Congress — and I’m trying to pay a compliment to their intellects here — know that if you just yank the troops out, the bloodbath to follow would be horrific. It’s why they didn’t push the constitutional battle with the president any further than they did, but decided to say, OK, we’ll wait until September and see then.
In a political sense, the current situation is ideal for antiwar politicians. If they did something radical (and effective) like cut off the funding, the troops would have to pull out, and they would be responsible for the consequences. This way, they’ve made their statement — repeatedly, just to make sure their constituents know how vehement they are about it — but that mean old wicked president just WON’T DO WHAT WE DEMAND! So they get to keep running against him, which has worked for them so far. The guy is just SO unpopular (and deservedly so).
Oh, I’m sure that many of these folks really, really mean it, and sincerely want our troops out of harm’s way as soon as possible. There is nothing quite so sincerely aggrieved and saddened as an antiwar politician in time of war. But in the meantime, this is a good political situation to be in.
Brad.
Talk to the hand, because the face ain’t listening.
Bill, I’ve read that before, it filled me with shame then, and it fills me with shame now.
By the way, it turns out I messed up something on this post. There are TWO Moiras involved with this organization: Moira Mack, and Moira Whelan.
Both responded. Ms. Whelan offered interviews with some of the organization’s policy experts, which I will take advantage of when I get ready to write about this subject for the paper.
Moira Mack responded more to the substance of my question. An excerpt:
I thank both Moiras for their responses.
Andrew Sullivan says it all today:
A gentle reminder: We did not invade Iraq to police a sectarian civil war for ever. We did not invade Iraq to permanently prevent an al Qaeda presence there with our troops. We invaded to remove what we were told were stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and to pre-empt the development of nuclear weaponry, because, after 9/11, we decided not to take the risk of Saddam handing over such weapons to Qaeda or Qaeda-style terrorists. Removing a brutal tyranny and creating a space for democratic life were secondary and tertiary reasons, and were designed to defuse the logic of Islamism in the Middle East. I agreed with all three rationales.
But, ahem, what are we doing there now? We discovered that the WMD issue was a chimera or a lie. We removed and had Shiite goons execute the dictator. We tried to construct a constitutional order for a non-dictatorial, national political settlement. History will judge whether the subsequent disaster was a function of a hard task screwed up or an impossible task screwed up. But right now, we have done all we wanted to originally accomplish, except, of course, anything close to a stable state. So what is the rationale for staying?
According to the Republican candidates, it is because leaving would make matters worse (even Rudy Giuliani isn’t foolish enough to repeat the democracy objective). How worse? The emergence of a failed state where al Qaeda and other Islamist mass-murderers could regroup and thrive. Well … now look at Gaza.
Well, I guess I’m convinced: the Endless War is pointless: the savagery is remarkable for its cruelty, the government is crumbling. Heck, perhaps we should just leave them to their own devices:
Sorry, sorry. Wrong page. I was talking about Gaza.
This is of course also Bush’s fault, but Israel must share of the blame too. After all, Israel withdrew from Gaza and allowed the Palestinians to elect Hamas. (Hat-tip to James Taranto.)
I haven’t heard the expression “Freedom is on the March” in a while. It’s funny how this president can conveniently forget about all the alleged progress we were making in the middle-east once it become apparent just how phoney his proclaimations were.
Bud, do you see what Moira Mack did? She kept in mind the difference between a comment or question that can be responded to, and one that deserves to be responded to. She disdained Brad’s juvenile challenge, and instead simply took the opportunity to say what she wanted to say, pulling a stock comment from the stack and firing it off.
And that’s how to deal with the 28%-ers. You don’t indulge their arguments and challenges, you just keep hammering your message home.
Moira Mack is much more skilled that I am in addressing the long-ago discredited stay-the-course in Iraq agenda.
That’s an interesting perspective. I don’t suppose it occurs to you that she didn’t answer the question for the same reason neither you nor anyone else who wants to pull out answers it — you can’t.
Or else, it did occur to you — hence the hostile, emotional, ad hominem response. At least Moira, being a professional, did not resort to that.
According to UN reports,two million Iraqis have left their country,with 100,000 more leaving every month.This is the true “surge”.
What a monstrous humanitarian crisis we’ve created.
Brad.
Talk to the hand.
…because the face ain’t listening.
What’s fascinating about American involvement in Iraq is not the question of staying or leaving. There is no intellectual dispute any longer on that. Of course we need to set some sort of timetable for a full withdrawal of all military forces. The question really is how best to accomplish that. It’s sort of like smoking. It’s not a matter of whether to quit or not, of course a smoker should quit. Rather, what is the best way to accomplish that?
There remains a valid argument that we should withdraw slowly so as to provide some sort of security for the Iraqi civilians who remain in order to allow them an opportunity to leave. That would be akin to using a patch or gum to quit smoking.
But I think it best to just go cold-turkey. Pull all our troops out as soon as transportation can be arranged. The faster we get out the better off everyone will be. We can begin building our military and goodwill with the rest of the world.
If anyone has some good points for a slow withdrawal instead I’d be interested in hearing those arguments.
bud –
Here’s an idea for a slow withdrawal: give the surge a little more time to work, then withdraw US troops through Syria to Lebanon.
What do you think?
Mike, when are you and Brad volunteering for the Indefinite Iraq Occupation Force?
Sorry, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders are over-strength and there’s a waiting list for the Chicken Hawk Reserves, GOP Division.
How Mike C. finds the time to type his fantasies on here and post on his own blog is amazing.
I chose one nugget of Mike’s disinformation dissertation. I guess that he’s never heard of Valerie Plame. Hint: it’s why Dick Cheney’s top aide was convicted of lying to federal agents and obstructing justice.
BTW, Mike, I suggest that the government set up a special tax bracket for the chicken hawks who want American soldiers to police the Middle East.
You and Brad– who evidently have better things to do than fight the war that you cherish (like Cheney and ‘Nam)– can pay five times your income tax costs. If you opt for the 10x bracket, Dear Leader will award you a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Certainly you, Roger Ailes, Brad and the neo-cons will at least put your money where your mouth is.