Headed for Disaster in Iraq???

The chorus is bewailing the disaster that has befallen the U.S. in Iraq, the ruination and the impending doom that faces the country on 30 June. Excuse us if we don’t see it. What we see is an opening for civilized governance in the Middle East provided by our government and our troops. It will become a disaster only if the window closes because we lose our will to continue the advance.

The chorus is bewailing the disaster that has befallen the U.S. in Iraq, the ruination and the impending doom that faces the country on 30 June. Excuse us if we don’t see it. What we see is an opening for civilized governance in the Middle East provided by our government and our troops. It will become a disaster only if the window closes because we lose our will to continue the advance.

The U.S. has lost nearly 1,000 brave sons and daughters in Iraq and our allies have lost dozens. That is a sobering price Americans and others have paid for the overthrow of a regime horrendously brutal and threatening even by the brutal standards of the region. It is in part the price of planning an invasion without “softening up” the targets and eliminating the places of refuge for Iraqi troops, insurgents and terrorists, and of determining in advance to treat the population (including men of military age who may or may not have been part of the military and security services) as if they were occupied by Saddam, not part of his regime.

You can argue that pounding Baghdad or Tikrit or Fallujah despite the IRAQI casualties would have been good because it would have saved AMERICAN lives. You can argue that given the choice NOT to do that we should have been prepared with a super-sized occupation force. You can argue that the mission should have included sealing the borders. You can argue that instead of installing an American potentate we should have given the Iraqis more control of their country from the beginning and certainly should give it to them now. OK, fair tactical points.

But where is the disaster? Removing Saddam was and remains, in our view, a necessary step in protecting America’s national security interests in the age of global terrorist capabilities. American sacrifice in Iraq is for American national security.

But it is also a gift to the Iraqi people that stopped the filling of mass graves (400,000 or more including children), the torture and rape, the systematic starvation of Iraqi children by the regime under the oil-for-food scandal, and the Stasi-like internal security apparat. And while we are hugely skeptical about the ability of one nation to “build” another, we recognize that having removed the old regime, we are responsible for what happens to the Iraqi people in their near-term future.

Free Iraq has now had two ruling groups, one selected by the U.S. and one by the UN; both are more representative of the citizenry than anything constituted by any Arab government anywhere at any time. The next one will be elected by the Iraqis. Sovereignty and security are coming – too slowly for some, but the total rejection of al-Sadr’s mini-revolt by Iraq’s Shi’ite leaders, and the total acceptance by Iraqis of al-Sistani’s directive that they NOT aid al-Sadr against the U.S. was an extraordinary political development overlooked by the disaster-mongers.

We would have liked an immaculate war after which “the people” suddenly emerged as Jeffersonian democrats. What we have is a messy and still evolving situation which, in fits and starts, is evolving for the better for America and surely for Iraq.