As the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq nears, the war’s malfeasances will be stiffly recounted. The delusive justifications, mortifying initial occupation, infrastructural neglect, mismanagement of funds, relentless civil war, and wanton squander of human life will be wrested into the American consciousness once more. While the vilest partisans will blacken the moment with sleazy attempts to imbue Iraq with a sort of glowing sanguinity that would make even Norman Rockwell vomit, the American people are secure in the reality that the last four years have been a fiasco in every respect. This reanimation of history will inevitably focus the nation on its future in the region. This focus will make plain that, barring an imminent shift of a dramatic magnitude, the Iraq debacle will soldier on in its corrosion of American and Iraqi well-being.
Unfortunately, few positive changes can be found in Iraq. Britain plans to withdraw thousands of troops by the year’s end. The civilian death toll holds at a ghastly average of more than 50 per day. The Republican escalation of the conflict is disguised as a naïve attempt to address political and economic problems with an ineffective military solution. The true aim of the strategy is to vainly salvage the neoconservative philosophy from total repudiation. The consequences will emerge only in the form of flag-draped coffins.
Considering these circumstances, there’s no positive change in Iraq that one may justly project. The divide between Shiites and Sunnis is too deep, Iraqi resentment towards Americans is too great, and President Bush demonstrates that he is too concerned with his legacy to change strategy in any meaningful way. Like a train without brakes, the disaster in Iraq cannot help but barrel towards bedlam, its momentum too great to overcome.
The war in Iraq has been lost from the moment we invaded. The American people recognize that the issue is not if American troops will withdraw, but when such a withdrawal will occur. The only change Americans expect to see in remaining longer in Iraq is in the number of American casualties.
Now is the time for strategic redeployment. Such a plan will allow combat troops to leave Iraq by this time next year. Those who see fit to strand Americans in that terrible tempest any longer deserve the harshest of rebukes.
We must be willing to accept culpability for our failure in Iraq. To blame the Iraqi people for our failure would be to condemn the victims of our folly. To admonish Iran for our failure would be to concoct a hollow bogeyman of the very sort that started this mess.
It is America that bears responsibility for destabilizing Iraq, inflating Iranian influence in the region, and reducing its international clout to anemic levels. It is America that must now take responsibility by protecting our troops from further violence and prosecuting the authors of this tragedy to the greatest extent that the law allows.
If America cannot have victory with honor, it must strive for the latter over the former.
