As I See Iraq

I was reading the Sheppard Express, our local left wing rag and came across an interview with some poor guy whose son has been killed in Iraq. This guy is out to get the troops pulled out and so I thought I’d respond. Here’s my response.

What always amazes me when groups like Military Families Speak Out spring up in opposition to a war the US is fighting is the total disregard they have for realpolitik. The fact is, no matter how we got there and no matter for what reasons the current war was launched, the fact is we are in this war and a price must be paid. We either remove our troops and allow the Iraqi people to settle it in the streets and thus end the shedding of American blood in Iraq or we carry on, doing the best we can. If we do the first though I am not convinced that it will lead to saving American lives and it certainly will not help Americas image world wide.

If we leave there will almost certainly be four outcomes:

1) we will show the world that we don’t have the moral or military stomach to follow through on the jobs we start (wrong or right);
2) we will show the world that we really don’t care about the Iraqi people and would prefer tens and even hundreds of thousands of them die in a bloody civil war rather than a few thousand of our own – I guess the ratio is currently abut 20 Iraqis to each American soldier);
3) we will show the world that we do not have the military or political savvy to stand up to rouge states (involved in terrorism or not); and,
4) we will free those Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq to sneak across our Mexican borders to do what they do best – kill innocent bystanders – this time American innocent bystanders.

Of course you could argue that this is painting the picture in the bleakest of terms. It is possible, I suppose, that the current insurrectionist, seeing America pull out, will lay down their guns and negotiate a peaceful settlement with their Iraqi brethren with whom they have fought for hundreds of years. It is possible, but not bloody likely.

And you could argue that we care enough about the Iraqi people to leave them alone to decide how to settle the matter themselves. But once those same Iraqi people start seeing rivers of blood in the streets do you really think they will appreciate the sentiment? Do you really think they would rather trade tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of deaths, a devastated infrastructure, and continual warfare between various factions rather than have American troops keeping the peace.

Yes, you could argue that we shouldn’t be policing the world, that it’s not our job. That we should pull out immediately because we got in there for the wrong reasons. I love this. If I broke into you house and destroyed your living room furniture would you be satisfied if I just said, “sorry, I’ll leave now and you can take care of this mess?” I think not. It is an ancient rule in most cultures that if you break it you pay for it. Anything else is wrong and as our mothers taught us, “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

And yes, you could argue that those Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq will either not be able to get into the US, nor will they be able to pull off a large scale attack against us. If you believe that you aren’t paying attention. Our southern border is open, open, open. Six million “undocumented” people prove it. (The other six million are hear on “self-extended visa’s.”) And if they get here do you really think that all the stadiums, all the power plants, all the chemical factories, all the bridges, all the railroads, all the pipe lines, all the food warehouses, all the water supplies, and all the other possible targets aren’t vulnerable?

In conventional warfare your home turf is where you are strongest. But no general wants to be fighting on his or her own turf. It shows you are losing the war. No, if you want to battle you want to battle away from your base. This means higher casualties on the field and lower civilian casualties.

But wait, you of course remind me of the thousands and thousands of Iraqi innocent who have been slaughtered in all this. Excellent point, and I applaud you for realizing that not just Americans die. Oh, darn, I just looked at the pie charts of who is killing all those innocents. Oops, it almost all the insurgents. How can that be? Why would they target innocent people? The pie chart I’m looking at shows the total number of Iraqi dead (about 20,000), of whom less than 1,000 are known to have been killed as “collateral damage” and fewer than 100 as possibly targeted. Now let’s see, to be fair lets suppose the insurgents intended to kill only ½ of those they have actually killed. 10,000 to 100 seems a pretty clear picture of who is are the murderers.

But why are they doing this? Maybe they really hate America and as soon as we leave they will give their current and long term enemies the “high-five”, lay down their arms and live happily ever after. No, I don’t think so. Iraq has never been free because they have spent the last few hundred years ingaged in inter-tribal and inter-faith warfare. Nobody has given them a controlled opportunity to try out real self-rule. Maybe you think the transition to self rule should be nice and peaceful but if you think that you have put on cultural blinders. The Iraqi people have never had self rule and seldom in the course of human events has self rule come without the shedding of blood. The question we face to day is whose blood should it be, those who “pushed” the Iraqi toward self rule by removing the tyrant who was killing them at the rate of 2500 per month, or tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi people whose first taste of self rule will be rivers of blood in the streets?

Now back to those who have lost the will to fight because they see American bodies, some of whom are their own sons and daughters. It would be a sad day indeed if because I disagreed with them they decided my disagreement was due to insensitivity alone. Insensitivity does cause people to discount the feelings of others, but not always. And feelings are important in any complex decision, but not the only thing to be considered. The practical matter is that we owe it to the Iraqi people to continue attempting to keep the lid on civil war until they can deal with the situation in their own unique manner. By keeping the lid on the insurrection, a situation we caused, we give them time to rebuild their infrastructure, establish their government, train their own armies, and in general move toward a better life than they ever had under Hussein. That will cost a lot of money, and sadly, more American and Iraqi lives. It is only a really selfish person who thinks that freedom is just for them and is unwilling to sacrifice for the freedom of others. As long as our brothers are in the chains of tyrannical bondage we are all slaves. That is what many, and perhaps even most, of the soldiers in Iraq believe and even if our leaders are engaged in the war for other, more selfish goals, it still does not negate that the death of our American soldiers is giving them a chance at self rule.