Obscured vision
It's not like I pay that much attention to William Safire, but it strike me that in today's editorial he shows a distinct lack of imagination.
…There is no denying that the shooting down of a transport helicopter, killing 16 Americans and wounding 20, was a terrorist victory in Iraq War III. The question is: Will such casualties dishearten the U.S., embolden failuremongers and isolationists on the campaign trail, and cause Americans and our allies to cut and run?
Although such a retreat under fire would be euphemized as an "accelerated exit strategy," consider the consequences to U.S. security of premature departure:
Set aside the loss of U.S. prestige or America's credibility in dealing with other rogue nations acquiring nuclear weapons. Iraq itself would likely split apart. Shiites in the south would resist a return of repression by Saddam's Sunnis and set up a nation under the protection of Iran. Kurds in the north, fearing the return of Saddamism, would break away into an independent Kurdistan; that would induce Turkey, worried about separatism among its own Kurds, to seize the Iraqi oil fields of Kirkuk.
One result could well be a re-Saddamed Sunni triangle. Baghdad would then become the arsenal of terrorism, importer and exporter of nukes, bioweapons and missiles. There is no way we can let that happen. Either we stay in Baghdad until Iraq becomes a unified democratic beacon of freedom to the Arab world ? or we pull out too soon, thereby allowing terrorism to establish its main world sanctuary and its agents to come and get us.
Our dovish left will say, with Oliver Hardy, "a fine mess you've got us into" ? as if we created Saddam's threat, or made our C.I.A. dance to some oily imperialist tune, or would have been better off with our head in the sand. Most Americans, I think, will move past these unending recriminations, reject defeatism and support leaders determined to win the final Iraq war.
Here's something general I've noticed. When someone want's to "move past" something…unending recriminations, racial privileges, class divisions…there's always some big nasty area of responsibility the move-beyonder would like to just go away. But they usually have to name the thing first.
Safire STILL tries to maintain the illusion that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a threat to the USofA. WIth no nuclear program and a "biologicals program" that consists of some botox precursor in a guy's refrigerator, he STILL presents paranoid absurdities like this:
Another thing. Yes, you DID make our C.I.A. dance to some oily imperialist tune. A square dance, and the caller was an oily imperialist from Texas. They DID cherry-pick the intelligence, emphasizing what they wanted to hear and ignoring what they didn't want to hear.
So yes, this IS a fine mess you've goten us into.
Anyway, Safire presents the options of "stay the course" or "cut and run" as though they were the only two possibilities. I admit the analysis given here is close to correct, but the root of the problem isn't premature departure but premature arrival. We broke the damn country during an elective war so now we need to fix it. But there are more options than Safire presents. He just can't see them because they'd require getting rid of the people who made and perpetuate the initial errors.
Get rid of these guys and U.S. prestige will no longer be tied to the lipstick-smeared pig that is our current failed foreign policy.
