Leaving Iraq

by shamanic

The debate about leaving Iraq has definitively become one of "when" rather than "if", and in general I think this is positive. I'm one of the many who doesn't have any good ideas on this topic, but movement on the US occupation of Iraq feels better than no movement.

I do wonder about the ramifications, though. Osama bin Laden and his tag alongs are still out there, and their game plan, as I understand it, is essentially to destroy America by baiting us into self-destruction.

If that's true, isn't the bin Laden response to an American withdrawal from Iraq another big attack? If his master plan is to keep us mired in endless wars to ultimately bankrupt us as a credible military, economic, and moral force in the world, he and his fellow travelers can't really just let us walk away and go about our lives.

This is one of the countless ways that Bush's leadership in the War on Terror has hobbled our options and made us less safe. Had we succeeded in killing or capturing bin Laden in 2001 (or 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, or even earlier today) and followed through on our obligations to Afghanistan, our circumstances would likely be dramatically different today. Respected as a moral force in the world, etc., and so on.

Sometimes I just want to hit my head against a wall. We didn't get Osama. We didn't finish the job in Afghanistan. We won't finish it in Iraq, if we ever could. We are known around the world as torturers, kidnappers, and killers. And there are a whole lot of really nasty people who still want to cause as much mayhem and catastrophe as possible for us.

These are the broad outlines of my depression spiral of the last few years. At least it's Friday. And maybe we'll leave Iraq, accept the risks of living on our own terms, and become what we were once again. And maybe we'll do it soon.

Update by Cernig. Poor Jules - he hasn't figured out yet that Cernig the Newshog is a guy and Shamanic is a gal. (Hey, at least he called it "Newshog" and not "Newspig" this time - which means I can stop calling him Cretinden.) It's also possible that he hasn't figured out that admitting you don't know how to unravel the Gordian Knot Bush's misadventures have made out of Iraq is better than simply parroting other folks' talking points. I'd love to read Jules' personal plan for victory, in detail. If he posts it on his blog and lets me know I promise to respond, in detail.

Then there's Dan Collins - who doesn't know what to say about this post over at Protein Wisdom but has no trouble finding 97 words in comments here. But it's OK, it's just the Kool-Aid talking there too: "the idea of the war was always already that we would make the Islamists understand that there would be a significant price to pay for commiting atrocities against the US". It appears that Dan, despite the last four years, still thinks Iraq had something to do with 9/11, we'll find those WMD any day and that the Satrapy of Iraq is really a sovereign nation.

Update by shamanic: I'll start adding my name at the top of posts to avoid confusion. I generally don't post in comments these days (I usually read them), having adopted the high and mighty blogger privilege of making a point but not especially caring if anyone else buys it. When I miss, I miss, but I like to think that sometimes I touch on something that resonates with other people. If not: Blogs are free, yo. So are comments. Shred away.