Five years in
March 16, 2008, 9:50 pm
Posted by John McGreevy
We’ve perhaps not done enough to mark the five year anniversary of the war in Iraq, a sobering milestone that makes this war one of the longest in American history, and a long distance from mission accomplished. See David Bromwich for a measured analysis of the Bush administration’s rhetorical evasiveness (abuse instead of torture, a surge instead of an escalation, contractors instead of mercenaries) as it prosecutes a war certain to loom as a pivot point in the modern history of both the United States and the Middle East.
I have always found John Burns of the New York Times a very impressive journalist. Here is the conclusion of his article in yesterday’s “News of the Week in Review:”
Opinion polls, including those commissioned by the American command, have long suggested that a majority of Iraqis would like American troops withdrawn, but another lesson to be drawn from Saddam Hussein’s years is that any attempt to measure opinion in Iraq is fatally skewed by intimidation. More often than not, people tell pollsters and reporters what they think is safe, not necessarily what they believe. My own experience, invariably, was that Iraqis I met who felt secure enough to speak with candor had an overwhelming desire to see American troops remain long enough to restore stability.
That sentiment is not one that many critics of the war in the United States seem willing to accept, but neither does it offer the glimmer of cheer that it might seem to offer to many supporters of the war. For it would be passing strange, after the years of unrelenting bloodshed, if Iraqis demanded anything else. It is small credit to the invasion, after all it has cost, that Iraqis should arrive at a point when all they want from America is a return to something, stability, that they had under Saddam. For America, too, it is a deeply dispiriting prospect, promising no early end to the bleeding in Iraq.
It may or may not be true that many or most Iraqis would like us to stay until things become safe. The problem is, we don’t seem to have a plan. We seem to keep staying on, hoping that something will happen. It’s like a totally dysfunctional couple staying together “for the sake of the kids”, but doing nothing to change the basis of their dysfunctional relationship.
We don’t seem to have a plan is right!
And we didn’t have a very coordinated one to begin with. Michael Gordon’s piece in this morning’s Times does not really report anything new about the dismantling of the Iraqi army and the seed bed of the insurgency, but it is a powerful and painful reminder of the incompetence of the Bush Administration (and not just Mr. Bush). Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/world/middleeast/17bremer.html?hp