[Dialogue] Staying the Course Compounds Iraq War

[Harry Wainwright]

Colleagues, a good article from Andrew Greeley. Peace, Harry 
  _____  




Published on Friday, January 6, 2006 by the Chicago Sun-Times
<http://www.suntimes.com>  

Staying the Course Compounds Iraq War 

by Andrew Greeley

Why did the Bush administration pick Iraq as a target for the war it needed
and wanted? Why risk death to more than 2,000 Americans and more than 30,000
Iraqis? As part of his current public relations campaign, President Bush
admits that much of the intelligence on which the Iraq war was based had
been faulty. He assumes responsibility but blames the intelligence services.
However, he goes on to say that the removal of Saddam Hussein was the
"right" thing to do. Saddam is a bad man. He has killed his own people. He
caused instability in that part of the world. He hates America. He was
always a threat. We had to get rid of him. 

Many Americans are willing even now to swallow such obfuscation even though
it is a coverup for the phony rationale propounded two years ago. 

The proper question is why, of all the bad people in the world, was Saddam
targeted? The president's charges could be leveled against many of the
sociopaths on the loose in Asia, Africa and South America. 

Who but far-out liberals would object to an attack on Fidel Castro? Or Hugo
Chavez? What about Kim Jong Il of Korea? Surely he is a greater threat to
the United States than Saddam. Or the Muslim Arabs in Khartoum who have been
practicing genocide against black Christians in southern Sudan and black
Muslims in Darfur? Or the Shiite grand ayatollahs in Iran? Or the shifty
Syrians who have been stirring up trouble for 30 years. Once we win
"victory" in Iraq, who will be our next target? Not all these leaders, it
might be said, are threats to the United States. But was Saddam a threat a
couple of years ago? The president says he was, but where is the evidence
that Iraqi terror was aimed at the United States? There is plenty of terror
there now, but didn't our invasion and occupation create it? 

With a wide selection of possible targets, why did the administration pick
Iraq? 

The first reason is that the administration needed a war as an excuse to
enhance the wartime powers of the commander-in-chief. The United States had
swept away the scruffy Taliban in short order. The "war" on terrorism needed
another target. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was sure that Iraq would
be a pushover. Shock and awe, some special forces, and a compact
expeditionary force would wipe out Saddam and all his troops in short order.
Had we not driven them out of Kuwait as one would swat an annoying mosquito?
It would doubtless be an easier job than even "taking out" Castro. 

Moreover, the generally pro-Israel neo-conservative intellectuals assured
the administration that a democratic Iraq would "reconfigure" the situation
in the Middle East. The way to Jerusalem, they insisted, was through
Baghdad. So Iraq was the obvious target for another "war on terrorism" even
though the evidence that Iraq had cooperated in terror against the United
States or was even planning on it was thin -- and we know now nonexistent. 

Behind the administration's assumptions were two huge and costly errors. The
first was that resistance in Iraq would collapse immediately. The president,
the vice president and the secretary of defense were utterly unprepared for
the insurgency and even now show no sign that they know what to do about it.
The second was that Iraq was prepared for democracy. They assumed and still
do that if you can organize a fair election and the majority wins, you have,
ipso facto, a democracy. 

What you are more likely to have is Shiite theocracy and a Sunni caliphate
in civil war. There is no tradition in Iraq of a civil society in which the
various factions would share power and abandon their historic propensity to
kill one another -- a propensity recorded in all the history books about
Mesopotamia that the neo-cons and the president had not read. 

So the president's argument that America must "stay the course" in Iraq till
"victory" is as worthless as his previous argument that Saddam possessed
weapons of mass destruction. "Victory" will come only when Sunni and the
Shia stop killing one another and that will not happen in the lifetime of
any of us, a hopeless task as ought to be evident by now. 

And, by the way, might one ask when the American bishops are going to follow
the pope's good example and condemn torture, even when the victims are not
American citizens? 

C 2006 Chicago Sun-Times 

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