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War in Iraq
by Constance Merritt
August 24, 2007

"To address the war in Iraq as unwinnable is ludicrous, the only issue is the resolve of the people and how many believe the misinformation pandered by the far left" (Marty Scott, News & Advance, Aug. 22).

Contrary to promises, we are LESS SAFE here at home since the US invasion of Iraq: al-Qaeda is more active and dispersed than before the war and the US presence in Iraq breeds extremist violence and puts our service people in harm’s way. According to figures from the Brookings “Iraq Index” and the Institute for Policy Studies, as of November 2003 the number of resistance fighters in Iraq was estimated at 5,000; as of March 2007 the estimate is 70,000.

Furthermore we have seen and are seeing the dire consequences and strategic nightmares that then former Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney predicte4d in an April 15, 1994 interview:

Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

CHENEY: No.

Q: Why not?

CHENEY: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off -- part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right (video and transcript posted at http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001662.html).

In the absence of weapons of mass destruction, yellowcake from Niger, a creditable connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, or nefarious aluminum tubes, one has to wonder what had changed in less than ten short years. The installation of a president not averse to the doctrine of pre-emptive war and a grab for other people’s natural resources, as was, to his great credit, George H. W. Bush? I know that I am supposed to think that the attacks on September 11th are what changed, but it is worthwhile to remember that other nations have suffered terrorist attacks and continue to live under the threat of terrorism, but have not launched a global war on terror that licenses aggressive wars on sovereign nations that have neither attacked nor threatened to attack them and that pose no creditable threat to their national security.

But granted, excepting the former Secretary of Defense’s prognostications, mine is the perspective of a bleeding-heart liberal. Still we the citizens of this once great nation, liberals and conservatives alike, might do well to look ahead and seriously (and honestly) consider what we ourselves are willing to sacrifice in pursuit of the present cause (whatever that is) because wars are not won by blind allegiance, flag-waving or resolve. Wars are won by blood and trauma and treasure and by the tragic (and, yes, often heroic) deaths of someone’s best beloved.

Like everyone else in the Bush administration, Gen. David Petraeus can’t say how long our troops will need to remain in Iraq, but he has said that

"Just about everybody out there recognizes that a situation like this, with the many, many challenges that Iraq is contending with is not one that's going to be resolved in a year or even 2 years. In fact, typically, even historically, counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine-to-ten years" ( http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,283515,00.html).

And it is worth noting that for Petraeus that nine-to-ten-year timeframe would start from the security operation launched on February 14th as a result of the latest troop surge. So assuming the Iraqi insurgency conforms to historical models, we are not even half way there, whatever exactly there means.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. Doug Lute in an August 10th interview broadcast on NPR’s All things Considered, citing the personal and professional and broader strategic implications of the high levels of stress our soldiers and their families, and the U.S. military as a whole, are laboring under as a result of repeated deployments and the extent to which our forces are committed around the world, says with regard to the question of reinstating the military draft

“I think it makes sense to certainly consider it, and I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table, but ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another” ( http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12688693).

Whether a decade’s-long military engagement in Iraq, with its concomitant investment of American lives and treasure, is acceptable to citizen’s of Virginia’s sixth district feels like a question it is time for all of us to ask. Are U.S. objectives and interests in Iraq such that we are even willing to consider the taking of our sons and daughters through the apparatus of a military draft? If the answer to either of these questions is NO, it might be time for each one of us to stand up and say, “It ends in September. No more lives. No more money. No more slow, but steady progress toward the ruin of us all.”

As for me, not one American or Iraqi life is worth all the oil in the Middle East, and Democracy imposed and maintained at the barrel of a gun can never be worthy of the name. If that makes me un-American, please enlist me in the roles of the enemy noncombatants.

Constance Merritt
Lynchburg, VA