On 3rd Anniversary: Editorials Dither While Iraq Burns

As with their news coverage, the editorials are often harshly critical of the war and the administration. They inevitably say the right things. Yet, after all that, they claim, despite no real evidence, that things will only get worse if we started even a very slow pullout or, gosh-- after three years with no end in sight--set some kind of timetable for same.

About two years ago, I made the change from someone who was against the war but believed that the US had a responsibility to stick around and reconstruct Iraq (rebuild what we bombed, etc) to someone who started understanding that this is not, in fact, how the world works.

At this point, behaving responsibly means beginning to disengage militarily while generously supporting indigenous reconstruction. We remove our troops from the role of occupier, eventually removing them altogether. Local people will have to take on the task of maintaining order. It won't bring peace and serenity overnight, but Iraq will never have a stable civil society as long as US forces are occupying the country.

So we have to withdraw, and we also have to switch the slush funds for rebuilding from Halliburton (which was always a scam) directly to Iraqis. We should have done this from day one: it was the only way the infrastructure wasn't going to get totally fucked up, but a combination of greed and pretension (the Iraqi's needed us to show them how to rebuild, many believed) sunk that hope. If Iraqis really needed our expertise, one would think they could have bought it at market rates, but no, we had to take up the white man's burdin. And here we are.

I don't think withdrawl is likely to happen until the political and security situation deteriorates further. Most members of the power elite share a comic-book sense of American Exceptionalism. They still cling to the fantasies that sold the war: that it would be a Liberation, as if Baghdad were like occupied Paris and Saddam Hussein hadn't been running shit with an iron fist (and our backing) for the better part of 30 years.

They still believe that we have to "make the best of it." It may be a kindly impulse, but there's a word for this sort of pride: Hubris.

The Iraqi Occupation, along with the rest of our Pax Americana, is going to come to and end sooner or later. The only question is whether we manage this transition intentionally, or whether we are overtaken by events.

Sadly, it seems more likely that our leaders will subbornly refuse to change until it's politically impossible to do otherwise because people are simply fed up with the pointless fucking carnage. This whole exercise has been a fantastic waste of human life to satisfy a few hundred bloated egos. Hubris indeed.