I Said It In April, 2004

In 2004 I was posting to a History Channel discussion group devoted to the US invasion of Iraq. I accidentally came across several page I had printed out back then. 11 years later, everybody's saying what I was saying then.

Da Feet of Which Tribe?
(Reply to "More Defeatist Diatribe" by DBWriter)
BStanley

marcusLC:
Anyone have an exit strategy for Iraq? Since Bush doesn't seem to.

BKS:

April 26, 2004
[US policy in Iraq has been set by] the White House, secretively consulting with some of the civilian leadership at the Pentagon and the Israeli government, and not consulting, in advance of or during decision-making with anybody else nor even, after decisions are made, letting anybody know what they are, with any concreteness or detail, until after it has attempted to implement them. The only likely explanation for this bizarre conduct is Ariel Sharon's Svengali-like control over GWB on this subject matter, and Sharon's understandable fear that any other approach …would soon lead to the dissipation of that control.

MarcusLC:
I supported … Afghanistan as necessary but I have never understood this entire Iraq thing and now there seems to be no way out.

justaguy:
The short, simple answer is that there is no 'exit strategy' from Iraq. Never has been.

SHAQ:
We were lied to.

Mushashi:
The Iraq war has been full of questions with either late, inadequate, or flat out wrong answers. The costs, the objectives, the reasons, the justifications, the duration, the necessity, all have become multiple choice questions because the Bush administration hasn't been up-front with us about anything.

BKS:
That the Administration has never identified the objective of our warfare against Iraq clearly and concretely, or, if any of the objectives the Administration has disclosed could be so described, it didn't remain the stated objective for more than a few weeks, is the one theme restated, in various ways, by nearly all the postings in this thread. I have no idea which of these postings DBWriter meant to denounce as a "defeatist diatribe." Perhaps it was just their common note of skepticism.

"Defeatism" entered the political vocabulary as a term used by French Right and Center politicians to denounce the anti-war stance of the International (i.e., anti-war) Left parties in France and other Allied states during the First World War. It was soon taken up for the same purpose by the Social Patriotic (pro-war; in Russia, after February 1917, "revolutionary defensist") Left. In the politics of the Central and Allied powers (except for the US, where fear of Allied "defeat," after America joined the Allies, never really existed, and such terms as "Reds" and "Hun-Lovers" were more suited to the general level of political discourse) it became the favorite epithet used to dismiss any questions or collywobbles about pouring everything into pursuit of the vital (and, of course, inevitable) Total Victory. Its real sting lay in its invariably being coupled with more or less explicit accusations that the "defeatists" were not really just weak-kneed or war-weary fellow countrymen but in fact spies or traitors working for the Total Victory of the crafty and perfidious Foe. In France, this general line derived initial plausibility (or at least, resonance) from the circumstances of the defeat France had suffered in the Franco-Prussian war (and urgency from her very near approach to military collapse during the Great -- and greatly hushed-up -- Mutiny of 1917, in which German agents indeed played a role, though it was trifling compared to that of the French generals). Its German version, post-defeat, grew into the Dolchstosse credo recapitulated in the latter chapters of Mein Kampf.

Even today (or as recently as 1997, anyway) "the kind of defeatism ... characteristic of those who came to accept, rather than reject, the occupation of France [during WW II]" is an indirect way of describing a thesis and/or its proponent as Fascist or crypto-Fascist. (See
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/french_theory_and_criticism-_5.html_.) It is true there were fascist groupings in France, and also true that, before 1939, Hitler was reported to have boasted to his inner circle that he would form and foment such elements and use them to ensure Germany's victory when war came, but it is highly doubtful that French Fascism had any substantial role in France's actual defeat. (Dealing with the consequences of defeat was another matter.)

I don't know whether DBWriter actually meant to suggest that the previous posters (or the diatribist among them, whichever he was) is a secret agent of the enemy. I don't even know whom he takes "the enemy" to be, at this juncture. (Apart from Massachusetts, which he names.)

Indeed, I don't see how anybody's notion of what would constitute "defeat" can be much more clear or specific than his definition of "victory."

DBWriter:
> Exit strategy? How about, we leave after we win?

BKS:
Funny. That's exactly what I was saying while everybody was jumping about the flight deck hugging one another, admiring the President's flight suit, and shouting, 'We won!"

DBWriter:
> What is a win?

BKS:
Surely this calls for a drum-roll!
But, with no disrespect to DBWriter, shouldn't it have been our President who laid out for the people before he committed the nation to war what he would consider a "win"?

DBW:
>A government in Iraq that is independent of the
> surrounding dictatorships,

BKS:
Golly. I would have thought the government Iraq had before we invaded (or even ultimated) would have been satisfactory on this count. Syria is the only "surrounding dictatorship" Saddam hadn't actually made war on, and the sister Ba'ath Parties had become estranged, to put it mildly.

But I'm not exactly sure why the fierce independence of Iraq from its neighbors should be a major desideratum to America. I can't say that I would feel personally aggrieved if, for example, the line between Syria and Iraq were peacefully erased (whatever name might be given the consolidated state). If anybody is to have people dying in bloody combat to preserve an arbitrary line that the people living on either side are content to have erased, just because Winston Churchill is supposed to have drawn the line, I say let the Brits do it.

DBW:
> and not conducive to civil
> war among the 3 basic sects that comprise the
> population of Iraq .

BKS:
Again, whatever his faults may have been, you could hardly say that Saddam was such a weak ruler that the country was threatening to spin apart as if nobody was wielding power at the center-- could you?

So if an independent and unitary Iraq, just as first drawn by Winnie and blessed by the League of Nations, of blessed memory (both), were what we really wanted to continue to see, why the heck didn't we just send S.H. a quiet little note saying "Thanks for a job well done!" (Kinda like GHWB did, literally or figuratively, at least twice.)

And anyway, I can't say it matters a great deal to me whether Iraq remains one state or becomes twenty-seven. I realize that GWB, without consulting anybody in this country outside his own office, or even very effectively canvassing authorities in Istanbul and Teheran, purported to promise Turkey and Iran that we would on no account permit our invasion to lead to the break-up of the Iraqi state as defined, territorially, by the League of Nations. But everybody knows George will say anything if his wind is up and there's no responsible adult around to stop him. Besides, these two ancient states undoubtedly have learned how to handle minor disappointments in foreign policy, as, indeed, each has, in the not too distant past, helped to school the still young United States on the handling of foreign disappointments small and not so small.

And if you asked my personal preferences, I'd say: Up Kurdistan! (On both moral and material grounds, why shouldn't the Turkic peoples be forced to recognize that demanding national self-determination for themselves while denying it to others is not ... well ... kosher?)

DBW:
> This means a form of democracy,
> and disallows theocracies.

BKS:
I guess I must have missed the news about the discovery of the previously lost books of the Politics of Aristotle explaining this. History is replete with democracies, timocracies, aristocracies, oligarchies, monarchies and dictatorships (tyrannies, to Aristotle) which remained independent of their neighbors and did not split up -- for lesser and greater periods of time. But one of Telli's conclusions was that democracy is generally the least stable of all systems. "Theocracy" is not an Aristotelian word, and I'm sure he would have deplored the impiety of equating the rulership of priests with the rulership of God.

DBW's contribution seems to be developing into a highly original exploration of the sunny side of Saddam Hussein. One of the few (other) good things one might say about this state prisoner (but of what state, come 7/1 ?) is that he managed on the whole to preserve the pristine Ba'athist secularism, without being noticeably nastier to religious persons and/or institutions, per se, than he was to just about everybody.

Anyway, if the U.S. is now to embark upon a crusade for the universal elevation of the secular state and state secularism, shouldn't GWB warn his buddies down South to run like heck from that bizarre granite block inscribed, on five surfaces, with an odd miscellany of Bible verses? The one they're all wailing over because it stands no longer in the Temple of Mammon? Our cruise missiles have a pretty large radius of destruction, despite their precision.

What if we have to take drastic measures lest the forces of obscurantism and black reaction seek to sully some otherwise suitable document of the new Iraqi state with some prejudicial reference to "one nation under Allah ," or the like, while Bush's Solicitor General is still insisting to the Supreme Court that "one nation, under God," in our Pledge has nothing to do with religion? Won't people be confused?

And then there's the problem of all of the theocratic measures the Likud has been pleased to impose in Israel, as demanded by Shaz (the only political party in the world which literally and seriously claims to be the one true earthly voice of God) as the price of that modern-State-of-lsrael-hating party's vital participation in the ruling ultrartight coalition. Before we start the bombing to wipe out Shaz, shouldn't we prepare for retaliation in the form of another wave of JDL terrorism in this country? (If the IDF itself doesn't just send Apache 'copters to "return" some of our own missiles, this time.)

As for the Vatican, certain Italian parties have long been clamoring for its dissolution. All we've go to do is get one of them in power.

Gee, now to name our new war (spin is everything, you know). The War To Abolish Priest-Craft? The War To Prohibit The Opiate Of The Masses? The War Of Reason Against Superstition? Gosh, I feel like such a revolutionaire! Bishops to the lamposts!

Maybe we can name one of our aircraft carriers (or better, a "boomer") "The Atheist"!

DBW:
> To win this Arab war against America

BKS:
The first necessity was to create it. GWB has done so, as instructed by Sharon.

Of course, it was and is Sharon's war against the Arabs, and he thinks the US should go anywhere, bear any burden, pay any price, to fight it for him.

As for Dubya, his minister told him one time that if the US does everything just like Ariel Sharon the Man of Peace says, the great war of Armaggedon will come real soon and destroy one-third of the earth but him 'n Laura won't be in no danger 'cause they'll have been taken right up on a cloud of rapture, just as pure and white and pearly as a Senator's new teeth, and then there'll be six white horses-- or was it a bay, a roan, and some other critter that won't never pollute the pure internal-combustion economy of W's "ranch?"

Not 'till after W's been taken up in a cloud o' glory so's the Lord Jesus can have his personal access time, leastways.

Somebody'll have to be ranchin' some neat animals somewhere, though, 'cause them Jews is gonna have to start slaughterin' cattle twicet a day in that there Holy Temple, so the Anti-Christ and his False Prophet can come and get 'em in his pocket and lead them all straight to Hell where they belong, 'cept for a few who'll get struck blind on the way to Damascus, covered with boils, starved near to death, take the Swamp Fever and Whooping Cough together, watch their kinfolk git burnt alive, and just at the last minute before their justly deserved years of earthly suffering end in a justly deserved Eternity of Torment in HELLFIRE, a lay sister of the Crawford Baptist Church will be dropped in by helicopter right beside that death-pallet of filthy straw and by a Holy Miracle of God that Baptist will be miraculously converted to Pentacostalism, so she'll know that Tongues Is Not Of The Devil and she'II "Let go, sister" in the very nick of time so's she can reel off the Six Steps To Salvation (For Predestinated Eyes Only) in perfect Modern Hebrew, even though the good sister (God bless her, Lord knows!) hasn't ever been real good with honest white Texican and that poor dying Jew will accept the Lord Jesus Christ as his/her personal Lord and Savior and be the very last and lowest person let into Heaven, just to give Eternal Proof that the Lord Jehovah can save anybody if He wants to bad enough. Praise the Lord! Glory!

Good thing America is up to the task of keeping Iraq strictly secular.

DBWriter:
> we must do one of two things:

BKS:
Sure, David Bernstein, would it be? But who's "we"? Ya got a mouse in your pocket?

DBWriter:
> ONE: Physically annihilate all current opposition,

BKS:
Are you sure you don't mean "population"? If you say you are, please tell us what makes you so sure?

DBWriter:
> and convert the surviving population to the benefits
> of being civilized and getting along with the modern
> world (i.e. they must be convinced that terrorism is
>very bad for them.)

BKS:
Yeah, but--
> Annihilate all supporters of the current government of Israel
> and convert the surviving population there to the benefits
> of being civilized and getting along with the modern
> world (i.e. they must be convinced that territorial aggrandizement
> through military conquest and ethnic cleansing will not be
> tolerated by the international community)

BKS:
Would be just as moral, much easier to accomplish technically, and actually win us friends instead of enemies.

DBWriter:
>Or;

> TWO: Be patient enough, and dedicated enough, to
>nurture the development of a modern democracy Iraq ,
> and help the Iraqi people build a national pride
> based on the ability of Iraq to be part of the modern
>world.

BKS:
OK, but, if we make it happen, the Baghdad-based Arab Renaissance will guarantee the early liquidation of the Zionist entity.

DBWriter:
> This doesn't mean being a satellite state of the US.

BKS:
No, but of Israel.

DBW:
> But, you can bet that we will never even consider
> allowing anything even remotely related to any
> terrorist nation or state (I think Massachusetts
>could be included here,) to influence the
>development of the new government in Iraq.

BKS:
How's your mouse/tapeworm, Da'ud?

Around here (Arizona, the other United States and overseas possessions including American Samoa) "we" will always be more than remotely related to Massachusetts and Massachusetts will always have an equal voice in the U.S. Senate and thus an assured influence on the development of every aspect of America's foreign policy (in the long run). And someday soon, unless Divine Providence no longer favors the prosperity and advancing influence of this Republic, loyal American states and loyal Americans -- that is to say, those whose first and wholly undivided loyalty is to America, only, and who would die before they would intentionally help make her the cat's paw or dupe of any alien power-- will recover control of all aspects of America's foreign policy.