War in Iraq and looming war with Iran got you down? I recommend a visit to Larry Johnson's posting late yesterday at noquarter.typepad.com. In stark contrast to the blather from the few remaining defenders of Bush and the still timid majority in Congress, Johnson not only asks the right questions, but proposes sensible answers.
It's sad to think that our representatives believed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that we'd be unable to focus our need to react on the ones who actually perpetrated those acts. Once the routing of the Taliban was over, even with the escape of Bin Laden, Bush and Congress could have led us to continuing the hunt for terrorists over there while fortifying ourselves over here. Even if one accepts that our own xenophobic overreaction to 9/11 and the lack of any post-Cold War counterweight excuses our eliminating Saddam's regime in Iraq (we were willing, able, and had been trying to effect regime change ever since the first Gulf War anyway) what excuse do we have for believing that we'd end up in any better situation than the one we're in now?
I just don't see how it would make us less safe to admit our mistake and move our troops out of Iraq. If, as Johnson suggests, we need to keep some kind of presence either in Iraq or in the neighborhood to deter Iran and/or facilitate our reaction to aggression, I guess I could accept that. But it should be obvious that saying we must "succeed" in Iraq only begs the question of what success means. Do we have to stay until the various factions start to resolve their disputes peacefully? Do we have to stay until Iraq's neighbors demonstrate a respect for Iraq's inviolable sovereignty? Would even a doubling or tripling of our presence significantly hasten those outcomes?
Our representatives should be daring to ask those questions of us and when they see how quickly and overwhelmingly we reject as fantasy that definition of success in Iraq, they'll respond as they should have almost four years ago. Our country, our system, our way of life has survived much worse than having to retreat from Iraq. If Bush won't lead us out of this wilderness, we have legal and non-violent ways of replacing him with someone who will.
