The last month in Iraq has shown significant deterioration in the situation. And the realization is starting to dawn on some who have tried to be optimistic that all the good options are gone. Pretty soon, "peace with honor" will sound good to all but the terminally Republican.
Molly Ivins isn't optimistic: Iraq outrage WorkingforChange.com 09/14/04
There was a time when it would have helped to have more troops on the ground -- we could have stopped the looting and actually imposed order. That would have meant following Army Chief of Staff Gen. Erik Shinseki's advice, instead of the military geniuses in the White House. There was a time when we could have seriously gone after more international support and gotten our allies to help pay for this costly botch. But that would have meant admitting our allies had been right about too many things, and the White House was too busy smirking, bowing and crowing to improve its diplomacy after the war one iota over the offensive, unnecessary alienation of allies it worked so hard on before the war.
There was a time when we could have been more sensitive toward the Iraqis themselves -- for example, by not moving our headquarters into Saddam Hussein's palace or shutting down their newspaper -- to them what democracy is all about -- or keeping Abu Ghraib open.
Speaking of Abu Ghraib, what happened there is not the Marshall Plan. Nor is giving billions of dollars to Halliburton and all the jobs to non-Iraqis a Marshall Plan. The Bushies have slowly, one-by-one, destroyed every chance we had to make this occupation work. And then they blame Kerry for not coming up with a plan.
The Bush Doctrine was based on the idea that the US military could impose it's will quickly and at low cost pretty much anywhere in the world Bush and his merry band of adventurers sent them to fight wars of liberation. But Bush and Rummy sent the Army to do something it's not trained to do - fight a large-scale counterinsurgency war - and without enough troops to accomplish it, even if they had the correct skills. And without the infrastructure of military, paramilitary and police in the home country they would also need.
And it's a disaster.
Chris Allbritton of the Back to Iraq 3.0 blog who also writes for Time reports on his blog: It's Worse Than You Think 09/14/04
I don’t know if I can really put into words just how bad it is here some days. Yesterday was horrible — just horrible. While most reports show Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra as “no-go” areas, practically the entire Western part of the country is controlled by insurgents, with pockets of U.S. power formed by the garrisons outside the towns. Insurgents move freely throughout the country and the violence continues to grow.
I wish I could point to a solution, but I don’t see one. People continue to email me, telling me to report the “truth” of all the good things that are going on in Iraq. I’m not seeing a one. A buddy of mine is stationed here and they’re fixing up a park on a major street. Gen. Chiarelli was very proud of this accomplishment, and he stressed this to me when I interviewed him for the TIME story. But Baghdadis couldn’t care less. They don’t want city beautification projects; they want electricity, clean water and, most of all, an end to the violence.
And in the midst of all this violence, most of the Iraqi Interim Government is out of town. Security Advisors, heads of important ministries and the chief of the new Mukhabarat are all mysteriously absent. The Iraqi security forces are a joke, with the much talked about Fallujah Brigade disbanded for being feckless and — worse — riddled with insurgents who were being paid and trained by the U.S. Marines.
Josh Marshall, focusing on the effect of the Iraq War on the presidential election, says that there are a number of ways the war "could have 'succeeded' in the American political context": finding large quantities of WMDs, finding evidence of Iraqi-Al Qaeda ties, or even producing some credible semblance of a hopeful postwar situation in the country.
Back more than a year ago, when it first began to dawn on many that stabilizing, let alone democratizing, Iraq would be a great struggle, the challenge was often framed around the unacceptability of allowing Iraq to 'become another Lebanon' or descend into civil war.
Let's be honest with ourselves. That's already happened. That's the clearest reason why yesterday's violence garnered so little attention. It's not surprising any more. A year ago, when a bomber blew up the Jordanian Embassy, it sent a shock through the United States. The same was more or less the case in the bombings that followed through the rest of 2003 and into early 2004.
Iraq has quite simply become a disaster for the United States. And while people disagree over why this has happened, no thinking person can now fail to see that it has happened.
And Joe Conason weighs in on the war again this week: A misbegotten diversion; a monumental tragedy WorkingforChange.com 09/15/04.
When the President should have been pursuing the struggle against Al Qaeda, framing a broad international strategy against Islamist extremism and erecting massive defenses at home, he decided to invade Iraq. Why he became so determined to wage that "pre-emptive war" remains unclear, although the fact that the overthrow of the weak Iraq regime was "doable" surely influenced him.
To what extent the President was misled about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein -- and to what extent he misled the public -- is still a matter of intense debate. What cannot be disputed is that he made the wrong decisions about Iraq. He ignored wise counsel about the consequences, costs and requirements of an invasion. He credulously bought into the pipe dreams of a cheap and easy triumph that would transform not only Iraq but the Middle East. He diverted material resources and personnel from the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. He neglected critical improvements in homeland security. He gravely damaged our diplomatic alliances, leaving America and the world more vulnerable to the serious perils developing in North Korea and Iran.
The mess in Iraq is bad enough. The mess that the war has created for US is astonishing. And the effect on American politics will be lasting, though very hard to predict right now. The official end of the Vietnam War was 1973, the last American troops evacuated Saigon as it was falling to the North Vietnamese in 1975. Thirty years after that period, the Vietnam War is one ofthe most emotional issues in the current presidential campaign.
The effect of the Iraq War may be even longer lasting.
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