The war that is.
The debate about the war in Iraq these days strikes me a lot like the discussion that the rehab Nazi’s use in justifying the illegal and unconstitutional coercion of citizens into the ever growing and increasingly profitable AA based rehab industry. If you think for yourself-or assert your rights under the Constitution-or worse yet try to get better on your own ( the way that most people “recover” BTW-whatever the hell that means) -you are in “denial”.
So it is with the discussion of the surge. The boundary limits have been set:
1) Criticism of the President’s designated spokesman is considered somehow unseemly-even though it was the President who made Gen Petraeus the lightning rod on Iraq. As has been pointed out by others– “you can’t separate Petraeus from the war. Petraeus is the war. He’s not a private soldier, he’s a public figure; he’s a political operative, one who at present is the point man for promoting the program of America’s politician in chief. ”
2) Non events are turned into a big deal. The president touts troop cuts-even thought they are not cuts-and they come almost a year later than was implied in January when the “surge” was announced. Come next July there will still be 130, 000+ Soldiers, Sailors, Airman, and Marines in Iraq over 5 years after the invasion. The President makes it look like bold leadership-when in reality he is bowing to the inevitable:
The biggest fiction was that because of the “success” of the surge, we can reduce U.S. troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15 by next July. Gen. David Petraeus has recommended this step, and President George W. Bush will order it so.
Let’s be clear one more time about this claim: The surge of five extra combat brigades (bringing the total from 15 to 20) started in January. Their 15-month tours of duty will begin to expire next April. The Army and Marines have no combat units ready to replace them. The service chiefs refuse to extend the tours any further. The president refuses to mobilize the reserves any further. And so, the surge will be over by next July. This has been understood from the outset. It is the result of simple arithmetic, not of anyone’s decision, much less some putative success.
3) The war will continue to be defined in terms that are 180 degrees out from what it really is. We are told we are supporting an “ally of the United States…fighting for its survival.” Never mind its not an ally at all-but an Arab basket case of our own making-weighted down as all Arabs are with the albatross that is Islam. It is a government”racked with divisiveness as a result of sectarian clashes within its own society.” That is a very different thing than a valued ally. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this question-if Iraq was a dictatorship like Egypt-but it was our dictatorship-would we really care about how inclusive their government was? No. Nor should we.
We will be told again and again that the key to defeating Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Because they hate freedom.
Both liberals and conservatives tend to believe – and frequently state in public – that al-Qaeda “hates us for our freedom.” The president of the United States seemingly can’t get through a day without saying so, and the prime ministers of Great Britian, Canada and Australia are his amen choir.This is of course abject nonsense. If bin Laden harbored such hatred of freedom, he would’ve issued fatwas against countries like Sweden, and Switzerland would have been vaporized years ago. Saudi Arabia is hardly a free society, yet its royal family is al-Qaeda’s number one target. Ditto Jordan. On the the Islamist list of “greatest Satans,” the United States comes in fifth, after Shi’ia Muslims, apostate Arab governments, Israel and India.
The whole time we will ignore the fact that the West is doing nothing significant to squeeze out the two things that keep the movement alive: Islam and economic injustice. No , we will continue to believe that there is a military solution to a non military problem. Tell me again the definition of insanity?
You can’t ask such questions. Because you are not qualified to diagnose your own (or the nation’s) problem. Just as in rehab, you have to hand over control of your life and your intellect to your sponsor. Who may be even more screwed up than you are, but they have given lip service to the 12 steps.
Come to think about it-the Presidents speech, and the entire surge for that matter is analogous to the Twelve Steps. Maybe Fred Kagan or Bill Krystol is the Presidents sponsor:
1. We admitted we were powerless over Iraq—that our war had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to [in] sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our higher power,as we understood him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. [Refused to] Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs[In Iraq].
6. Were entirely unready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to not to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made {some} direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly never admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for our interpretation of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having never had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to ignore these principles in all our affairs.
There is of course a price that is paid in listening to your sponsor-you lose your self in the ritual of the process-and forget the goal-to live a peaceful life that is of benefit to you. (There is a reason that AA has a very high suicide rate). AA is about slogans over substance though and that suits the President fine. His remaining war strategy is an AA slogan: Fake it till you make it.
Which, by the way, is the reason the rest of us need a drink.