The Last Thing We Want To Do
Today's Opinion Journal points out the problems facing Iraq. One of the biggest ones is American defeatists. The more it looks like American politicians are going to cut and run from Iraq, the worse the situation will become for everyone concerned.
Yes, the Iraq project is difficult, and its outcome dangerously uncertain. The Bush Administration and its military generals have so far failed to stem insurgent attacks or pacify Baghdad, and the factions comprising Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government have so far failed to make essential political compromises. But the American response to this should be to change military tactics or deployments until they do succeed, and to reassure Iraqi leaders that their hard political choices will result in U.S. support, not precipitous withdrawal.
The current American panic, by contrast, is precisely what the insurgents intend with their surge of October violence. The Baathists and Sadrists can read the U.S. political calendar, and they'd like nothing better than to feed the perception that the violence is intractable. They want our election to be perceived as a referendum on Iraq that will speed the pace of American withdrawal.
The Bush Administration hasn't helped matters of late with its own appearance of indecision, asserting on one day that we must avoid "cut-and-run" while leaking on another that the forthcoming Baker-Hamilton report might be an opportunity for a strategic retreat. President Bush has sounded resolute himself, but many of his own advisers seem to be well along in their own electoral run for cover.
A measure of rationality at least came yesterday out of Baghdad, where General George Casey and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad tried to put the violence in some larger context. The Iraq government is in fact "functioning," as Iraqis continue to get their food rations, and as more than a million civil servants, Iraqi security force members and teachers continue to show up for work every day and get paid. Just this weekend, Iraq's oil minister announced that production had surpassed pre-war levels.
"Economically, I see an Iraq every day that I do not think the American people know about–where cell phones and satellite dishes, once forbidden, are now common, where economic reform takes place on a regular basis, where agricultural production is rising dramatically, and where the overall economy and the consumer sector is growing," said Mr. Khalilzad, who for this attempt at hopeful realism will be derided in some quarters as a Pollyanna.
The advocates of precipitous withdrawal need to understand what they outcome of such a course will be. They also have to be ready to bear the responsibility for what follows. Because those advocates will be to blame for what follows. Nobody else. They will be. We, as a nation, cannot afford to abandon these people. We cannot afford to abandon ourselves, either.
By Shabazz al-Bundi, October 25, 2006 @ 6:47 am
How to defeat the U.S.:
Simply inflict casualties. The U.S. media will do the rest for you.