Iraq War: McGovern and McGovern

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

Former Senator George McGovern and Congressman Jim McGovern (no relation) recently did a joint op-ed on why the United States should Withdraw from Iraq Boston Globe 06/06/05.

They state some of the main big-picture promblems succinctly:

There are no clear answers from the administration or the Congress on how long our forces will need to stay in Iraq, what the anticipated costs in human life and treasure will be, or even what would constitute success.

They also address head-on the argument that the war justifies itself because it's a war and it's always wrong to stop fighting a war.  That's more-or-less how that argument goes, I believe.  Their response (my emphasis):

It is common to hear even some who voted against the war say, ''now that we're there, we have no choice but to stay."

We very much disagree. Calls to maintain the status quo echo the same rationale used to keep us in Vietnam. To those who contend that we would weaken our credibility if we withdraw, we believe that the nation's standing would greatly improve if we demonstrate the judgment to terminate an unwise course.

Our continuing presence in Iraq feeds the insurgency and gives the insurgents a certain legitimacy in the eyes of much of the world. We know from our own history that armies of occupation are seldom welcome.

This political point about the "will" of the American people isan important one, which I've mentioned before here.  The Iraq hawks argue that to withdraw troops on anything but the most favorable circumstances, i.e., "victory" (however they define it), would mean a failure of the Will of the American public.  No matter how this ends, there will be some of the officer corps who try to use this argument as an excuse for their failure to be able to pacify Iraq with half the military budget of the entire planet at their disposal.  The hardcore worshippers of war and force will insist that if we had just been "tougher", we could have "won."

I put "victory" and "won" in quotation marks because we have heard that argument made endlessly over the Vietnam War.  Yet try to get those who make the argument to define what winning there would have entailed and to talk about the potential risks of alternative actions.

No one can offer a neat and clean solution to the Iraq War that is not going to have major risks and all-but-certain negative consequences involved.  And the two McGoverns don't pretend to.  But their pragmatic view of how to minimize the damage to US national interests is sensible (my emphasis):

There are no guarantees that militarily withdrawing from Iraq would contribute to stability or would not result in chaos. On the other hand, we do know that under our occupation the violence will continue.We also know that our occupation is one of the chief reasons for hatred of the United States, not only in the Arab world but elsewhere.

Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of. After two years in Iraq and the loss of more than 1,600 American soldiers, it is simply not enough to embrace the status quo.

We are not suggesting a ''cut-and-run" strategy. The United States must continue to finance security, training, and reconstruction.

But the combination of stubbornness and saving face is not an adequate rationale for continuing this war. This is not a liberal or conservative issue. It is time for lawmakers in Washington -- and for concerned citizens across the nation -- to demand that this sad chapter in our history come to an end and not be repeated in some other hapless country.

That one sentence should be one the minds of every policy-makers and every member ofCongress when it comes to foreign policy: Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of.

The Bush administration got us into this war because they said it was vital to the safety of America to do away with Iraq's nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction."  Now they need to figure out how to get us out, and do it.