Centerfield

Premature Defeatism

Bob Herbert's prediction in the NY Times today that the Iraq war is "unwinnable"

How long is it going to take for us to recognize that the war we so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco — tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take?

is an example of defeatism that is premature, to say the least. The analogy to Vietnam is characteristic of many of his generation, but not at all fitting

Senator John McCain and others are saying the answer is more troops, an escalation. If you want more American blood shed, that's the way to go. We sent troops to Vietnam by the hundreds of thousands. There were never enough.

Beefing up the American occupation is not the answer to the problem. The American occupation is the problem. The occupation is perceived by ordinary Iraqis as a confrontation and a humiliation, and by terrorists and other bad actors as an opportunity to be gleefully exploited.

While I regret any loss of life, to be ready to give up after 60 combat deaths in the 3 months since major operations terminated shows is not decision-making, but panic.

I do not totally disagree with Herbert's conclusion, because I do believe that we should get the United Nations more involved,

The U.S. cannot bully its way to victory in Iraq. It needs allies, and it needs a plan. As quickly as possible, we should turn the country over to a genuine international coalition, headed by the U.N. and supported in good faith by the U.S.

but the deadly attack on the UN headquarters in Iraq demonstrates that the U.N's standing as a humanitarian organization will not guarantee the cooperation of the Iraqi people. Additional troops from other countries would be welcome to share the burden of policing Iraq, but the involvement of the UN could also lead to paralysis.

The United States is in a long-term conflict with certain radical elements in the Muslim world. The wisdom of choosing Iraq as a battleground in this war is debatable. Having made that choice, we do not have the option of withdrawing, or being anything other than the leading player in an international coalition.

Americans are an optimistic people. Political candidates who embrace Herbert's defeatism can only look forward to their own defeat.

Update: On the left, blogger Maxspeak goes even further than Bob Herbert

In a sense the Iraq situation is now like the Congo and Liberia, in and around which murderous armed conflicts evidently claiming hundreds of thousands of fatalities have raged for a decade or more. Africa is out of sight, out of mind, of course, because it does not have the strategic importance of Iraq to the U.S. imperial mindset. But creating peace in West Africa seems no more feasible than planting a garden of tolerance and democracy in Iraq.

All we can do is cut our losses by pulling out, UN or no UN. The only question is how much loss the country is prepared to absorb in the meantime. You heard it here first. This conflict will destroy the home of its most ardent advocates, the Republican Party. In light of the costs, I'd just as soon forego the pleasure of that particular outcome.

Posted by rickheller at August 21, 2003 09:13 PM