James Carroll has described the US dilemma in Iraq in uncomfortable but legitimate terms: The awful truth about Iraq Boston Globe 02/03/04
Since David A. Kay's testimony before a Senate committee last week, the public focus has fixed upon mistaken intelligence that led to the American invasion of Iraq. Democrats are pounding the issue, which may actually be fine with President Bush. Events of a year ago are not the urgent question. Democrats should be asking, "What about Iraq right now?" ...
Such is the climate of chaos that the Bush aggression has created that there is no clear way forward, and bad things are going to happen in Iraq -- no matter what Washington does now. Such unhappy news can sink the politician who dares admit it. Better to advance the conventional wisdom that, however mistaken the origins of this conflict, there is no choice now but to "see it through" -- if only to "support the troops." ...
In counterpoint testimony to Kay's from 33 years ago, young John Kerry famously asked a difficult question: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" After Kay's revelations, even the Bush administration seems ready to admit that the past justifications of the war in Iraq were "a mistake" (if only the CIA's), but what will it take for the United States government to admit that the present course of policy is equally a mistake? If the war was a mistake in its very origins, it is a mistake in its prosecution.
One of the things that Carroll's argument overlooks is the obligation that the US has under international law to defend and support Iraq until a reasonable transition to a sovereign Iraqi government can be made. But the question is a fair one: if the war was a mistake to begin with, shouldn't the goal be to wind down the military action and commitment as soon as possible?
There is a legitimate concern about showing American "will" and commitment once we've begun such an undertaking. But balancing it off is a need to show good sense in foreign policy, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment