A Moment of Reckoning on Iraq
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Durham, NC -- From the Five O’Clock Follies to General Westmoreland’s promise of light at the end of the tunnel, the Vietnam War was replete with examples of American military leaders taking bad news from the battlefield and reporting it to the public as if it were evidence of “progress.” In yet another bitter example of the unlearned lessons of history, we saw this story acted out once again earlier this month as General Petraeus selected a few favorable statistics and suggested that “the security situation in Iraq is improving.”
On what foundation does this optimism rest? The general’s conclusions rest primarily on selecting data from certain parts of the country, such as Anbar province, or on creating artificial categories of killings, such as “ethno-sectarian” deaths. Despite Petraeus’ insistence on such nuanced standards of measurement, it is actually quite straightforward to assess American progress in Iraq. The general himself described our mission as “population protection.” That is, our current goal in Iraq is to prevent the death of Iraqi civilians so as to create a secure environment for political compromise.
How much progress has the U.S. made in accomplishing this mission? According to the general’s own data, the number of Iraqi civilian deaths is virtually unchanged since the new mission began in February. While the location of these deaths may have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar province, Petraeus’ data indicate that about 1,700 civilians were killed in Iraq in February and about 1,600 were killed in August. Data from other sources paint a similar picture. For example, the Associated Press reports that the number of Iraqi civilians killed between February and August has fluctuated slightly but remains essentially unchanged at about 1,800 Iraqi civilians per month.
Echoing the calls for “peace with honor” in Vietnam, President Bush responded to the news of further failure in Iraq by proposing a withdrawal of some American troops as a “return on our success.” But slogans notwithstanding, in reality Bush is proposing that we keep the maximum number of troops in Iraq that the military is capable of sustaining. The planners of the “surge” recognized from the outset that the U.S. could not maintain even this modest increase in forces through 2008. And so the president is bowing to the limits of our over-stretched military and calling it “return on success.”
History will evaluate the damage that Petraeus and Bush have done to their respective institutions. The duplicity of Westmoreland and Nixon damaged the credibility of the Pentagon and the presidency with the American public for years in the wake of Vietnam. But the political spotlight now shines on Congress. Will they continue to stand aside at the cost of American lives lost in vain? Or will they acknowledge that there is no longer anything our military can do to rebuild a stable and secure Iraq?
So far it appears that Republicans in the Senate will continue to buy the promises of success, and any hope of change must await a new president in 2008. Yet even if the next president will acknowledge the reality of America’s failure in Iraq, then he or she must also acknowledge another difficult reality. While the president’s “return on success” is fictitious, his warning that American withdrawal from Iraq will result in the deaths of many innocent Iraqis is surely correct. We can end the war for Americans, but we cannot end the war for Iraqis. History suggests that the Iraqi civil war will play out according to its own internal logic, and there is little that outside parties can do to stop the bloodshed or shape its outcome. An American military presence may shape the timing or location of Iraqi civilian deaths, but there is no evidence that we can reduce their number.
America undoubtedly bears great responsibility for unleashing this disaster on the Iraqi people. That burden rests upon President Bush and those who encouraged him to launch a war under false pretenses with no plan for securing the peace. Having dug ourselves in this deeply, however, there will be nothing left for America to do but stop digging and beg the forgiveness of the Iraqi people and the international community for what we have brought upon them. Perhaps that measure of humility could be the foundation for a new approach to American foreign policy.
