"It's really military personnel and their families who don't want [the Army] to leave Iraq."

Underscoring once again the frequent difficulty of reconciling the conflicting information that one gets about Iraq, put the above quote from a service member in Lawrence Kaplan's story next to the results of a Pew poll that were published just today in USA Today, in which 49% of military families thought that the Iraq invasion was a mistake, with 55% giving disapproving marks for President Bush's job rating. Such ambivalence or outright disapproval would hardly seem to translate into wholehearted support no matter how you slice it.

It's admirable that the troops themselves are doing everything they can to try to win, and it's great that they've found a way to limit their casualties and make peace (as much as possible) with Iraqi citizens. But sadly, it's probably true that their efforts are destined to be undermined by a lack of political support. That's true here at home because Americans long ago concluded that this longshot experiment in nation building was a fraud and a travesty that was never worth its crushing costs to our nation. It's true in Iraq because the current Maliki government has no legitimacy at all, and still hasn't achieved any significant number of the benchmarks it was supposed to.

What the U.S. forces seem to have done successfully is to fight their way into the complicated system of tribes and militias in Iraq, and be accepted as a powerful player -- another tribe. While this may bring certain benefits in terms of a localized, near-term reduction in violence, is it helping in what is supposed to be the main goal of all of this: strengthening and legitimizing the central government? If anything, it almost seems to be doing just the opposite.

Well put.

I'm not surprised that many soldiers as individuals come away with a sense of fraternity with the nation of Iraq. That is a wholly good thing. Unfortunately, it has at best a tangential relationship to the strategic policies guiding the war which soldiers have no control over.

Our army is doing as admirable a job of stabilizing a foreign country as can be asked of it. But stabalization - "the mission" - is only half of the struggle that is the Iraq war. The other is an entirely Iraqi political affair, national reconciliation and rebuilding. Our soldiers could hold the line and keep Al-qaida at bay for another decade, but it would hardly make a difference if Iraqi leaders don't step up to the task of being responsible and civil members of their own society, and end the sectarian conflict.

I am dreading the day we pull out, if only because any and all negative consequences of doing so will inevetably be blamed upon those of us, like myself, who had the gall to suggest that the Iraqis themselves might, in fact, have a certain level of responsibility in rebuilding their own country. If soldiers want to stay until the mission is finished, that is admirable. But we all need to understand that action - not time - is what will hasten the successful end to this occupation.

jwschmidt:

I am dreading the day we pull out, if only because any and all negative consequences of doing so will inevetably be blamed upon those of us, like myself, who had the gall to suggest that the Iraqis themselves might, in fact, have a certain level of responsibility in rebuilding their own country. If soldiers want to stay until the mission is finished, that is admirable. But we all need to understand that action - not time - is what will hasten the successful end to this occupation.

Here is my problem.

Who in the hell gives you the right to paraly on Iraq's problems.

This for me is the the straw that breaks the camel's back. Who are YOU to tell me how to run my country? And then when you mess it up -- WHICH by the way, ALWAYS seems to happen -- you get afraid that it will be blamed on you. So you suggest that Iraqis "themselves might, in fact, have a certain level of responsibility in rebuilding their own country" - rebuilding from what? An unprovoked invasion by a country half a world away - for a crime which was not commited by them (Iraq)? Please.

Why is our army stablizing any foreign country in the first place? Our army should be for one purpose and one purpose only -- to defend our country. Not for stabilizations of other nations, not to provide policing of civil wars, not to build schools for impoverished peoples.

The arrogance, your arrogance sickens me. That you would deign to grace the world with your great wisdom to straighten out all those poor savages in the wilderness.

Don't get me wrong I place no blame on the soldiers who fight for our nation - but for the cowards and arrogant men and women who felt that those soldiers should have been sent to Iraq in the first place. Cowards for they would never join to go and help. Willfully sending the childen of other people to make the "sacrifice for freedom"; all the while buying new cars and refinancing their mortgages to buy hot tubs and lobster dinners. Arrogant for their ignorance and hubris. Assuming that other people can't solve their own problems in their own way -- in their own time. And to hear them, you, pat the lowly soldier on the back, "Good job Danforth. Sorry you're a quadraplegic now. But you did the best. Those darkies just aren't ready for civilization yet. Maybe in a few more years we can send your kids, if you have any, to try again. Cheers."

Well said, cod. The arrogance is simply awe-inspiring.

jwschmidt can speak for himself, of course, but I believe you misunderstand where he's coming from. He's a quite thoughtful opponent of the Iraq invasion, not a proponent or an apologist for the Bush administration.

Of course the Iraqis had this situation thrust upon them, but I too find it exasperating that -- whether they volunteered for it or not -- they couldn't have pulled together better as a society to make the most of such a tremendous opportunity. Like other post-war societies have done, they could have pursued peace and prosperity; instead, they chose ethnic bigotry, graft and senseless, unimaginably sadistic violence. You can say it was inevitable in the wake of a regime like Saddam's, and you can excuse it. But if the Iraqi people aren't responsible for their own behavior, then who is?

This is precisely my point.

They could have done anything they wanted - while Sadaam was in power. They didn't they didn't want to and we should not have "helped" them along in anyway. Furthermore when they DID want to we made sure they failed. When people are fed up enough they we take care of matters in their societies on their own. The arrogance is in the view that "we provided" them "with this opportunity" to "better themselves", etc. It is arrogant. Especially if you know nothing of their culture and life to assume anything. Why didn't our country pursue peace and prosperity, instead of bombing another country into submission? We provided ourselves with an excuse to rape and pillage the land and property of other humans. We make ourselves feel better by implicating the victim in not making the best of a bad situation. but it was never about the victim, only about allaying the nagging feeling that our cheap ($3 now) gas is paid for with Arab blood. With the Iraqi flavor being the most recent.

This is further compounded by the "unimaginably sadistic violence" comments. How long did it take European cultures to let go of the sadistic components of their societies?

Cod, I think you misinterpreted what I said. Maybe some of the sarcasm didn't translate well. My point was simply that, at this point, Iraq is mostly and Iraqi problem - they should control their own destinies.

What I was trying to point out was that the "iraq war conversation" that we tend to have revolves around what WE do with OUR troops. In my opinion, our troops can't do much more than they currently are to stabilize the country - the Iraqi people and their leaders need to step up to the task.

I opposed the war since long before it started, so I'm pretty sure I'm not apologizing for Bush's decisions. However, I think a debate about the choice to go to war is not really relevant here.

What war supporters say (which I was attempting to lampoon) is that EVERYTHING about the fate of Iraq will be determined by how much our nation supports our troops and keeps them in that pressure cooker. This is simply not true, yet when I try to change the subject to the Iraqi leaders and the Iraqi army, I tend to get called out as "defeatist" for having the gall to suggest that our soldiers aren't up to the task and should retreat. This is obviously an arrogant point to make. I was just trying to point out how hypocritical such a viewpoint is.

jw,

Noted. Sorry if I got you with some buckshot.

I am so frustrated however with the arrogant tone of most of my fellow citizens -- even the well meaning ones. Many feel that if those Iraqis would just stand up and "embrace democracy" things would be much better. This is part of the problem, rather than asking "Hey buddy you need some help?" people simply presume to give you help - and damn you if you don't take it. This is further screwed up by our public being told one thing and our government doing another thing. Of course when the bills come at the end of the month showing a $50,000 trip to Vegas - the family is up in arms.

Well then, I guess that it would be unfair to blame any society for its actions. After all, we're all just helpless victims of circumstance, even we Americans. You see, being ignorant of other cultures and making really stupid foreign policy decisions is just our way as a culture. We just can't help it. So please don't blame us. Same thing with the Nazis. They didn't ask to be defeated in WWI and have that horrible Treaty of Versailles thrust upon them. So it was "arrogant" for the Allies to have blamed them for that holocaust thing, which was simply a natural consequence of the conditions those poor Germans had to live in.

I don't mean to be flippant, I'm just trying to think out how individual actions and personal responsibility translate into macro-scale politics, and where it might be appropriate or not to judge things like blame or credit. Because it strikes me as perhaps condescending to say that the Iraqis are simply too put upon to be held responsible for the state of their society.

And please, we're supposed to assuage our collective guilt over the price of gasoline? If Arab blood has done anything, it has only driven up the price. If I were even more cynical than I am, I might even suggest that it was the intended consequence of Bush/Cheney to destabilize the Middle East so that their friends in the oil industry could make even bigger profits due to the inflated price of oil. Those threats about attacking Iran might have been misguided and ineffectual in every other respect, but they sure seemed to be goose those oil prices real good.

fingerpuppet wrote: That's true here at home because Americans long ago concluded that this longshot experiment in nation building was a fraud and a travesty that was never worth its crushing costs to our nation.

It could be that the American people actually listened when Bush said he would not nation build. Some of us feel like he may have fudged the truth a bit, or lied.

“There may be some moments when we use our troops as peacekeepers, but not often,” he said in the final presidential debate. In the second debate he suggested a broader philosophical disagreement with Mr. Gore: “I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, ‘This is the way it’s got to be.’”

George W. Bush October 2000

The simple is, the troops have done everything we could have expected from them and more, but it's not going to mean anything unless the Iraqis managed to put together a functioning government that's able to takeover their own internal security. That means our options boil down to three:

1) Declare victory and leave. We got Saddam. Yay! Bush has his glorious victory. Anything that happens after that is the Iraqis' problem, not ours. True, the resulting internal strife could spill over into Iran and Turkey, but hey, it's not like our standing in the international community can get any lower that it already is.

2) Stay and fight until "victory" is achieved. Of course, we have to define what victory is. And that's the sticking point. What level of reduction in violence or Iraqi readiness is considered "victory"? Funny how the neocons like Kistol and Krauthammer who continue to beat the "victory is at hand" drum never spell that out.

3) Stay, but leave after a set deadline. This will puts the Iraqi government on notice that they have a ticking clock to get their act together and either get a functioning central government together or scrap it in favor of a federalized system. Of course, the insurgents could just wait it out (which I suspect, many right now are simply waiting out until the end of the surge), but the Maliki government should know that fact as well and prepare for it. Perhaps, after the deadline, we could pull our troops back to Turkey or Kuwait and leave a carrier group in the gulf in case things spread out of Iraq.

None of these options look pretty appealling, but option 3 is probably the most feasible at this time.

fingerpuppet:

I don't mean to be flippant, I'm just trying to think out how individual actions and personal responsibility translate into macro-scale politics, and where it might be appropriate or not to judge things like blame or credit. Because it strikes me as perhaps condescending to say that the Iraqis are simply too put upon to be held responsible for the state of their society.

I'm not going to even address the first point in your post, its absurd.

I am trying to understand how the state of Iraqi society became the business of the American society. Clearly at some point someone decided - "Hey we need to do something about the Iraqi society." This is the arrogance in which I am discussing. It is arrogant to even consider trying to place my house in order when you know nothing of me or my family. Further more to illustrate the western bias, one needs to only flip the two actors around. Would you like Brazil, or Britain, Libya, or Japan to intervene in the very real racial issues that raged in the American south during the 1950's and 1960's? Please answer truthfully, my friend. It is okay for us to invade other countries and teach those darkies how to do things. When we use water hoses and police attack dogs on our citizens no one can tell us what to do. Arrogant.

People have a right to their own views of the world. The Iraquis, to my knowledge, have never expressed the slightest desire to establish a democracy or western govenment of any kind. I think that, for the most part, government can only function with some degree of consent of the governed. We didn't like Saddam, but I'll bet a quarter that the Iraquis, themselves, understood him very well. If he had been completely unacceptable, they would have gotten rid of him. The Cubans were very unhappy with Batista, so they supported Castro in overthrowing him. By the way, so did we. I saw his victory parade through Havana on TV right here in Los Angeles. Anyway, there is no reason at all to think the people of the ancient land of Iraq want our troops there or our form of government, certainly not a puppet democracy. The idea that some benefit to either the Iraquis or the people of the US is being promoted there is ludicrous. However, I wouldn't mind living in Bagdad for a while myself, and I'd be happy to go native.

Spare me your melodramatic political correctness. I was opposed to the Iraq invasion from the start and never supported the U.S. meddling in other countries' affairs like that. The Iraq invasion was unjustified and unwise. But apparently your attention span doesn't even cover my original post, where I made such opinions quite clear.

Apparently you're too busy with PC posturing and putting words like "darkies" in other peoples' mouths to bother making distinctions between disappointment at other peoples' inhumane behavior and a wish to invade or control them. As I said before (which apparently taxed your brain beyond its ability to respond), if it's "arrogant" merely to express opinions about other people's behavior, then according to your logic, what gives anyone, including you by the way, the right to their opinion?

I see. Apparently, if Saddam "had been completely unacceptable, they would have gotten rid of him." Does it then follow that whatever happens in Iraq, be it mass murder, thuggery, corruption or the subjugation of women, must be OK with the people of this ancient land? And the U.S. would be at fault if they tried to stop any of this mayhem?

My only qualms currently about Iraq are how quickly can we get the hell out of there while not inadvertantly causing a bloodbath or a genocide. Not out of a sense of personal guilt, because I never advocated invading in the first place, but because I simply feel it's a shame when innocent people get tortured and murdered. But, hey, if such wishes would be interfering with the right of Iraqi society to freely express itself, and if it might be seen as arrogant, then what the hell. Let's get out ASAP and not worry about it at all.