The Definition of A Noble Cause Posted by David Adesnik

There's about a forty mile stretch of US-29 that runs from Opal to Ruckersville in central Virginia.  In my mind, those forty miles are the graveyard of rock 'n roll.  From Washington DC down to Opal, you can listen to DC101.  One you make it down to Ruckersville, you can pick up 91.9 WNRN coming out of Charlottesville.

The only station I've found that comes in clearly from Opal down to Ruckersville is 93.3 WFLS, "Virginia's Best Country".  Living in a red state for the past twelve months, I've often thought that I should try my best to develop an appreciation for red state music.  To be honest, it hasn't worked out that well.  Often, I just turn off the radio and enjoy the scenery from Opal down to Ruckersville.

But this time I was driving after dark and really needed some music to keep my energy levels up.  And what I heard blew my mind.  First I heard Trace Adkins sing Arlington.  It's a wonderful song.  It's a story told by a soldier killed in Iraq who discovers that he is being buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  He tells us not to cry for him because:

I'm proud to be on this peaceful piece of property,
I'm on sacred ground and I'm in the best of company,
I'm thankful for those things I've done,
I can rest in peace, I'm one of the chosen ones, I made it to Arlington.

I often wonder about the Red States' support for the war in Iraq.  Conservatives have always distinguished themselves by their readiness to use force in order to protect the United States from those who threaten it. 

But now that Saddam's cache of chemical and biological has been exposed as a phantom, why do Red State voters support the war?  Is it because they support the president, full stop?  Is it because they support the soliders, full stop?  Or have a good number of them actually converted to George Bush's crusading democratic faith, which has so little in common with conservatives' traditional definition of the national interest?

In the second verse of Arlington, the narrator recalls that:

I remember Daddy brought me here when I was eight,
We searched all day to find out where my Granddad lay,
And when we finally found that cross,
He said, "Son this is what it cost to keep us free".

The narrator this implies that Iraq is also a war "to keep us free".  But how many Americans buy that?  Although I adamantly support the war on the grounds that only the democratization of the Middle East can ensure our ultimate victory in the War on Terror, there is only a distant and complex relationship between my personal freedom and the war in Iraq.  If conservatives' support for the war derives its strength from a sense of America being threatened, how long can that support truly last?

And then I heard Luke Stricklin sing American By God's Amazing Grace.  Luke Stricklin (photo above) is a National Guardsman who returned this past March from a twelve month tour of duty in Iraq.  There is no description that can do justice to his song, so I will simply reprint the lyrics, which even without the music are compelling and inspirational:

Bottom of my boots sure are gettin' worn
There's a lot of holes in this faded uniform
My hands are black with dirt and so is my face
I ain't never been to hell
But it couldn't be any worse than this place.
Tell my wife don't worry 'cause I know what to do
It makes you feel better sometimes, but don't know if it's true.
I know if I die it's just my time to go
But I pray to God every day that I may get back home.

Chorus: Well when you've seen what I've seen
Things don't seem so bad
Quit worrying 'bout what you ain't got, thank God for what you have
'Cause I could be raising my family in this place
But I was born an American
By God's Amazing Grace.

For the last twelve months I've had a new address
The neighborhood smells like sewage and the streets are lined with trash.
You never know what's gonna be the next thing to explode
But unlike these people, I have another home.
It breaks my heart to see these kids out on the streets
Walking barefoot through the trash, diggin' for something to eat.
I give them what I got, just to let them know I care
And I thank God it's not my son that's standing there.

(Chorus)

You want to talk about it, you better keep it short
'Cause I got a lot of lost time I gotta make up for.
Really don't care why Bush went in to Iraq
I know what I done there and I'm damn sure proud of that.
You got somethin' bad to say about the USA
You better save it for different ears 'less you want to crawl away.
And I laugh in your face when you say you've got it bad
Until you've spent some time on the streets of Baghdad.

(Chorus)

After recovering from my initial shock, I began to wonder if Karl Rove had written that song.  (You can listen to some of it here.) How could an actual Guardsman from Arksanas, just 23 years old, who suffered through twelve months in Iraq, feel that way about the war? Of course, I feel that way about the war.  But it isn't my life on the line.  I haven't had to test my ideology against the actual experience of democracy promotion.

I seriously did wonder if the song was some sort of hoax.  But for what it's worth, the Associated Press did a story on Luke Stricklin, so I'm going to assume that he really is the real thing.  It turns out that Stricklin first recorded the song in Iraq using a $25 guitar that an Iraqi boy found for him at a street market.  With the help of laptop and microphone, he went to work.  Once again, it's a story almost impossible to believe.

This is the definition of a noble cause.  This is the answer to Cindy Sheehan's question.  Luke Stricklin doesn't have a team of speechwriters or a degree in international relations.  Nor does he describe America as threatened, like Trace Adkins does.  He is simply proud of what he and his country have been able to do on behalf of others.

In contrast to Bush, Stricklin openly acknowledges that there are serious questions to be asked about why the United States invaded Iraq.  But now our mission is clear.  (See boldface above.  Emphasis added.)  Surely it is noble to defend one's homeland from foreign attack.  But how much more noble is it to risk one's life in order to protect a nation of strangers from deprivation and terrorism?

Perhaps it is not wise for the United States to commit so much blood and treasure to the struggle for democracy in Iraq.  Perhaps.  But it most certainly is noble.

Comments

[JohnFH]

Thanks, David, for a moving post. Your reflections pose the question once again as to when and where our actions should be dictated by sheer political expedience.

Less than is usually the case, I submit, if we take the example of Luke Stricklin and countless other American soldiers out there, seriously.

[Dan Kervick]

There are many very noble and valiant American soldiers in Iraq, performing heroic sacrifices. Along the way, on any given day, they they may indeed be faced with a small, localized noble cause right in from of them, and they may fight for that cause. They may protect a police station from sabotage, save a family from crossfire, draw fire on themselves so other innocent people can escape.

But the fact that a war is made up of thousands of noble soldiers doing thousands of noble things is not enough to say the whole war effort is a noble cause. We have to consider the possibility that it is the war itself that is largely responsible for the dangerous predicaments of many of these Iraqi civilians. The war sparked the insurgency, after all. Before the war, there were no police stations and police officers being blown up, and no streets to be secured from raging gunfire, and no IED's to be dug up and disarmed.

And although it must be painful for Mr. Stricklin to acknowledge it, since I'm sure he and his comrades did their best to avoid it, the invasion itself and the onslaught of military technology it carried along with it brought a tremendous amount of pain to innocent Iraqis.

We should also consider the possibility that the current aim of the war, to establish and secure a governmental regime that is actively resisted by a substantial portion of the country, and has only the half-hearted and ultimately transient support of most of the rest, is very likely a futile one. Continuing with that aim may be making matters worse than they have to be.

During the American Revolution, of course, some American rebels engaged in sabotage and terroristic reprisals against Tory civilians, when they weren't fighting those soldiers themselves. I'm sure many good British soldiers had occasion to save and protect many an innocent person from violence. And of course they were attempting to secure the country and support what they regarded as its legitimate government. Many Americans still supported that government, whether openly or covertly and quietly. There were a lot of good, noble people fighting for their country.

If you don't like that example, I'm sure you can think of another. There have been many evil wars. But that doesn't necessarily make the soldiers who fought in them evil. Many were quite noble, I'm sure, and occupied themselves with small causes that were equally noble. The fact is, many good soldiers do many good things in some very bad wars. Evaluating the nobility of a war cannot be a matter of compiling moving anecdotes from noble soldiers performing deeds of valor and personal sacrifice, and selflessly protecting the innocent. Those things occur on both sides - but surely both causes can't be equally noble or just, can they?

It is always comforting to say: Yes... mistakes were made in the past; but now our mission now is clear!" But it really isn't clear in this case. There are several very weighty options to be considered. And the outcomes of these options are by no means obvious. Our capacity to control the forces that are at work is limited, and our ability to predict the future is weak. Some choices lead to disaster; some hopefully do not. But it is hard to know which is which.

I think the "red state" patriotism you describe is ultimately even simpler than you paint it, and is not really just a red state phenomenon. You see it in small towns across America. I know I encounter it up here in New England. It goes something like this: "Your county calls; you answer the call; you fight. That's just what citizens and soldiers do. You have some faith that the country is good, and that the cause is just; and you hope the fight is for the best. But who knows? That's not the essence of the citizen's duty. The fact that I am fighting for my country is all the nobility that my cause needs."

No matter what the war, it will produce its share of tragic losses, bittersweet songs, and moving expressions of sacrifice and devotion.

[Cal]

But how much more noble is it to risk one's life in order to protect a nation of strangers from deprivation and terrorism?

Yes, I just wish the wogs could be made to understand this. Maybe they’ve gotten the wrong idea because – in our passionate love of democracy – we stuffed ballot boxes for our Baathist candidate.

Perhaps it’s because our soldiers casually shoot civilians, and somehow kill more innocents than the insurgents do themselves.

Or maybe the Iraqis are upset by the fact that we can’t account for almost $9 billion of their money, and – through no fault of our own – the rebuilding we promised them hasn't achieved very much.

Or perhaps the Iraqis don’t recognize the nobility of our intentions because they’ve been liberated before, and (I hesitate to suggest this) may not care for the Anglo-Saxons’ noblesse oblige.

Whatever the case, one must admit that these are mere realities, while the idea is truly noble, and greatly to be respected.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea -- something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to...

-- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

[doc]

...tres jejune.

[Angryman]

"Although I adamantly support the war on the grounds that only the democratization of the Middle East can ensure our ultimate victory in the War on Terror."

Great.

1-800-GOARMY

Have you called yet? Or are you just another Chickenhawk?

[Angryman]

"Of course, I feel that way about the war. But it isn't my life on the line."

Oh, you've already answered my question.

Chickenhawk.

[Tom Johnson]

Good writing. I wish every American could read this.

[MichaelW]

Thanks for the great post! And I couldn't agree more with your description of that stretch between Opal and Ruckersville. Maybe next time I'll just let the radio play.

[TallDave]

Great link, thanks for sharing.

Angryman,

Be careful about throwing around that "chickenhawk" stuff. Did you put on a police uniform before you asked them to put themselves in harm's way for you? Or are you a chickencop?

[Jeff Medcalf]

"We have to consider the possibility that it is the war itself that is largely responsible for the dangerous predicaments of many of these Iraqi civilians. The war sparked the insurgency, after all. Before the war, there were no police stations and police officers being blown up, and no streets to be secured from raging gunfire, and no IED's to be dug up and disarmed."

This is the real world, where there are no absolutes: you cannot compare the situation in Iraq to the platonic ideal; you have to compare it to what went before. Has the invasion and insurgency caused pain? Absolutely. However, the level of pain is significantly less than it was before the invasion. Instead of some 100/100,000 people dying per year, as it was under Saddam, Iraq is now down to about 45/100,000 people dying per year. And there are no longer rape rooms, or torture chambers, or children's prisons. People no longer have their tongues cut out for telling jokes about Saddam, or their ears cut off for speaking against the government. The Sunni's plight is worse, because they were the favored minority under Saddam; everyone else's plight is better.

You hear about areas without electricity sometimes (not so much any more, as reconstruction proceeds) without realizing, perhaps, that there are large areas of Iraq - even some urban areas - that never had electricity before the war. Same with clean water. Same with security from crimes, and in fact it is unusual now in Iraq that the majority of crimes seem not to be committed with the complicity of the police - or by the police.

So, yeah, it's bad in Iraq, but it is not as bad as it was, and it is worse than it will be; the trends are all in the right direction. Even with the insurgency, Iraq is reaching the level of Jordan for safety and government efficacy. Who knows where they will end up.

Oh, and "Angryman", the "chickenhawk" insult is about the most juvenile and badly thought-out piece of tripe around. If you want to be taken seriously, try reasoning your way out of your belligerent and defensive little corner long enough to figure out something meaningful to say.

[Richard Aubrey]

Adesnik gets it right.

But he takes his famous thirty-seven college credits, or whatever it is, too seriously.

He knows there's a complex connection between Iraq and his own freedom and safety. But how could a hillbilly know this?

[Confederate Yankee]

A moving piece, David. Thank you for sharing it with us (and thanks to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit for pointing it out).

I know there will be a temptation to attack Dan Kervick for comparing American patriots to terrorists (especially as the British Redcoats were responsible for the bulk of the burning of farms and summary executions, about 180 degrees from what he theorizes), and to blast Cal and Angryman for their moonbat ranting that spread a lot of foam, but little thought.

Trust me, they aren't worth your time.

They are small people with small thoughts and suspicious minds, that cannot think that others can have motives more noble, and visions far grander, than their own. President Bush, for all his failings, has repeatedly mentioned in his speeches that the freedom of the Iraqi and Afghani people were one of the reasons for smashing the Taliban and deposing Saddam Hussein. It should come as no surprise that many of our soldiers, sailors and airmen, who joined an all-volunteer military, share the same sense of service towards America and humanity that Luke Stricklin feels.

At the United States Military Academy at West Point, the cadets—the next generation of Army officers—follow three simple words: “The Code.”

Duty.

Honor.

Country.

Notice the order of those words, as they are no mistake. Our soldiers hold this nations founding ideals far higher than they do the mere land itself. Is it any surprise that they would carry these ideals to any nation they are defending?

[Don Meaker]

Neo-Platonism supposes that there is an ideal thing out there, and all real things must be compared to it, and reality is found to be lacking in comparison to the ideal. Neo-Platonism is responsible for the carping of those on the left. It was also responsible for National Socialism's murder of people who varied racially from their ideal.
Realism compares what was to what is, and finds that good efforts make the reality better than it was. It doesn't take much thinking to know that is true.

Elites often think that their greater education and literary backgrounds uniquely qualifies them to make decision, because their education and experience permits them to construct a better ideal. The common people have far more experience with reality, and know that elites must be constantly watched.

I support the war. I spend my time in the military, and work every day to make our soldiers task easier. Though noncombatants die in war, bad things happen in war. Fewer noncombatants have died in the Iraq war than died in "peaceful" Iraq under Saddam.

Saddam supported terrorists with money and training. He was behind the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. He was undermining sanctions with his program of bribery. He had ongoing programs to develop and produce weapons of mass destruction, and would have enlarged them when his bribery bore fruit in the removal of sanctions. He had used WMD before. Some small brain cell should finally convince leftists that he might have supported terrorists in their attacks on the US with WMD as soon as he could bribe enough UN people to get the sanctions removed.

Taking him out was not only good for the US, it was good for Iraq, which would no longer have to be punished for Saddam's misdeeds. If people don't understand that because of some ideal notion, then they are really stupid.

[Dadmanly]

Dan, I'm glad it gives you comfort -- beginning against the war in Iraq and all, and such a fanciful thought justifies your stand -- that Iraq is "more violent" today than under Saddam.

But it's a total crock of s***. REALIABLE estimates suggest MAYBE 20,000 Iraqi civilians killed (and an Insurgent who gets hurt in any operation who simply shows up at an Iraqi hospital will be deemed a "civlian"), versus anywhere from 300,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqis or more killed by Saddam.

You are right, Iraqis didn't need to worry about a random IED or police stations being blow up.

They only had to worry about Uday or Qusay thinking their daughter or wife or mother was a hottie and the whole family vanishes. Or piss some Baathist thug off and everybody goes through the wood chipper.

You sir are thoroughly ignorant or deluded if you think your assessment is accurate.

Cal, you sure would be right that if Iraqis saw any of that stuff actually happen -- instead of only being written about feverishly at Democratic Underground -- they'd sure get the wrong idea.

Problem is, your load is manure all the way down.

Your article from the less than credible Sey Hersch relies on anonymous sources who even he admits can't point to any specific acts of improprieties on the Iraqi election day. (They just know we were trying to do something.) His premise is foolish. We tried to force the election, which by the way went totally against the outcome Hersch suggests we wanted.

Oh, I get it. Really really really devious covert CIA, that also happens to be totally incompetent.

As to "casually" killing civilians, the article you link to does not say that, in fact, clearly describes incidents where "jumpy" troops making sure force protection is primary against possible vehicle borne IEDs, and engage what turn out to be innocent civilians. Unfortunately, this happens, yes, it turns some civilians against us. But you distort the article and the degree to which this happens.

Your other article comparing numbers killed by us or the insurgents doesn't work. but it doesn't matter. It can't be correct, and isn't. We'd have to be killing Iraqis by the truckload every day to keep up with the Iraqis killed by Foreign Jihadis and Baathist holdouts. (If you ever read anything that goes against your biases, you'd no doubt come across accounts of Iraqis getting fed up with Foreigners like Zarqawi killing Iraqis and trying to dictate what goes on in Iraq.

Possible theft and embezzlement of sums of money the magnitude of what is not accounted for is outrageous, about the only point you made based on hard fact. Given Iraqi culture and the kleptocracy run by Saddam for 35 years, it should be no surprise that Iraqis, given the opportunity, start looking for graft. We see it here locally, too.

As for all you fools screaming "Chicken Hawk" at anyone who supports the war, the only people who have a legimate right to clal someone out are those of us with our asses on the line. Cops, fireman, inner city teachers, lot of others risk their lives for their beliefs, too. I think its important that criminal be caught by police, tried by prosecutor, judges and juries, and sent to jail to be watched over by corrections officers. That doesn't mean I'm a Prison Hawk because I don't want any of those jobs personally. Grow up, and stop with what's an all too easy insult to avoid debate.

We are doing just fine with volunteers, thank you. All we want is support for our "noble cause" from the folsk back home. We don't need them to join up. (If they feel they can, and want to help us, that's great.) We don't want anyone who doesn't want to be here.

From a soldier in Iraq who is about as fatigued by blowhards that don't know shit about Iraq wasting all these blogbytes arguing with a bunch of "know nothing" cowards as I am about sitting over here in this dirt pile. (An Amnerican by God's Amazing Grace.)

[Dadmanly]

Dan, I'm glad it gives you comfort -- beginning against the war in Iraq and all, and such a fanciful thought justifies your stand -- that Iraq is "more violent" today than under Saddam.

But it's total bull. REALIABLE estimates suggest MAYBE 20,000 Iraqi civilians killed (and an Insurgent who gets hurt in any operation who simply shows up at an Iraqi hospital will be deemed a "civlian"), versus anywhere from 300,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqis or more killed by Saddam.

You are right, Iraqis didn't need to worry about a random IED or police stations being blow up.

They only had to worry about Uday or Qusay thinking their daughter or wife or mother was a hottie and the whole family vanishes. Or piss some Baathist thug off and everybody goes through the wood chipper.

You sir are thoroughly ignorant or deluded if you think your assessment is accurate.

Cal, you sure would be right that if Iraqis saw any of that stuff actually happen -- instead of only being written about feverishly at Democratic Underground -- they'd sure get the wrong idea.

Problem is, your load is manure all the way down.

Your article from the less than credible Sey Hersch relies on anonymous sources who even he admits can't point to any specific acts of improprieties on Iraqi election day. (They just know we were trying to do something.) His premise is foolish. We tried to force the election, which by the way went totally against the outcome Hersch suggests we wanted.

Oh, I get it. Really really really devious covert CIA, that also happens to be totally incompetent.

As to "casually" killing civilians, the article you link to does not say that, in fact, clearly describes incidents where "jumpy" troops making sure force protection is primary against possible vehicle borne IEDs, and engage what turn out to be innocent civilians. Unfortunately, this happens, yes, it turns some civilians against us. But you distort the article and the degree to which this happens.

Your other article comparing numbers killed by us or the insurgents doesn't work. but it doesn't matter. It can't be correct, and isn't. We'd have to be killing Iraqis by the truckload every day to keep up with the Iraqis killed by Foreign Jihadis and Baathist holdouts. (If you ever read anything that goes against your biases, you'd no doubt come across accounts of Iraqis getting fed up with Foreigners like Zarqawi killing Iraqis and trying to dictate what goes on in Iraq.

Possible theft and embezzlement of sums of money the magnitude of what is not accounted for is outrageous, about the only point you made based on hard fact. Given Iraqi culture and the kleptocracy run by Saddam for 35 years, it should be no surprise that Iraqis, given the opportunity, start looking for graft. We see it here locally, too.

As for all you fools screaming "Chicken Hawk" at anyone who supports the war, the only people who have a legimate right to call someone out are those of us with our asses on the line. Cops, fireman, inner city teachers, lot of others risk their lives for their beliefs, too. I think it's important that criminals be caught by police, tried by prosecutor, judges and juries, and sent to jail to be watched over by corrections officers. That doesn't mean I'm a Prison Hawk because I don't want any of those jobs personally. Grow up, and stop with what's an all too easy insult to avoid debate.

We are doing just fine with volunteers, thank you. All we want is support for our "noble cause" from the folks back home. We don't need them to join up. (If they feel they can, and want to help us, that's great.) We don't want anyone who doesn't want to be here.

From a soldier in Iraq who is about as fatigued by blowhards that don't know ddo doo about Iraq wasting all these blogbytes arguing with a bunch of "know nothing" cowards as I am about sitting over here in this dirt pile. (An American by God's Amazing Grace.)

[Amovar]

"Really don't care why Bush went in to Iraq."

David, I know those are not your exact words, but you clearly do care why we went to Iraq, as should all Americans. It's just that your reasons, irrespective of their nobility and worth, are clearly different than the public case the administration made. You, and many others saw the chance to instill there a pro-Western democracy that would in turn weaken neighboring authoritarian states. Fine. Bush, however, sold the war on WMD and began moving towards your reason as a post facto rationalization only after the fact that Iraq, ah, actually no WMD became clear for all to see.

I can't tell you how mistaken to think it is that in a democracy such as ours the entirity of the pre-war debate can be seperated from the fact that we're in Iraq right now, like it or not. Those two issues will never be seperate on any meaningful level, despite what hawks, liberal and otherwise, may say. And the reason for that is clear; we've got the same people running the show now as we did then, and if anything the democratizing idealists have lost power. You cannot possibly believe the way Bush and his administration have conducted themselves before March 2003, or between then and this very second has no bearing on our prospects for success. When you consider the character of an administration that acted as they did, with such carelessness and contempt, how can it make you confident that the war can be won? If it can it will be largely in spite of the administrations' decisions. If Bush won't "openly acknowledge that there are serious questions to be asked about why the United States invaded Iraq," why have any confidence about our future there?

Luke Striklin has a tremendous amount to be proud of for his service in Iraq, as does any American who has worn the uniform. But it is wrong to extrapolate the merit and justness of the cause, and continuing the cause, from even the aggregate nobility of what our soldiers have done there. The issue is not what they have done and not done. It's that even their best, as I'm sure Mr. Striklin (sorry I don't couldn't find his specific rank) has given will not by itself be enough. The war cannot be won by our soliders alone, and it is a grave mistake to see what the US is doing in Iraq as being only as simple as the good done by our soldiers. Iraq can't be won by tactical brilliance and humanitarian goodwill alone. The nobility of the soldiers is not the nobility of the cause. It's simply wrong to conflate the two, and doing so only harms our understanding of what America's responsibility there really is.

[Ed Hula III]

As a very passionate lefty who opposed (and opposes) the war, it disturbs me greatly when people, presumably on the left, will label someone as a "chicken hawk" if he or she is for the war and not fighting.

Mr. Adesnik is in the middle of school, his priorities are finishing his degree which our government deems an acceptable reason for not fighting. But that is not what disturbs me. It is the fact that it takes real courage to be able to go into the front lines of a war. Call someone a "chickenhawk" if you have the courage to fight in a war. I know I don't, I wish I did though.

On another note, "He knows there's a complex connection between Iraq and his own freedom and safety". Like what? A quick question; how many Saudis hijacked jets on 9/11, and how many Iraqis?

I am in college and I didn't use my education to form my opinion on the war, I looked at numbers and saw that if any nation other than Afghanistan was doing more to harbor and create terrorists, it is Saudi Arabia. But then again, how could someone studying international politics know anything about international politics.

[Judah]

You're not projecting your aims and goals on to Stricklin? It seems to me that its just as plausable to read that he's proud of serving his country, doing his duty with honor, defending his brothers in arms, etc., as for fighting a war for democracy. Yes, its a noble cause (that's been royally f'd up), but I'm not sure this country song is evidence.

[Richard Aubrey]

Ed Hula.
When I was an undergrad, I thought I knew a lot, too. Funny thing was, back in the Sixties, we thought we knew a lot, but the people who had already graduated were idiots. Since they thought differently from us.

I'm sixty, now.
I cringe at what I thought then, and I was a whole lot more plugged in to the real world than a lot of my buddies.

Your question about Iraq highjackers may seem deep to you, but it's simple and simplistic and looks even worse in the context of the point of "complicated". You ask a stunningly simplistic question to question somebody's view that an issue is complicated and involved and what do you look like?

When I was your age, and the liberals of pretty much any age still do, the response to somebody trying to explain something complicated was to interrupt and ridicule him. If you can keep yourself from doing that, you might find some grown up who is willing to take the time. But most of us have had the experiences with The Kids and are wary.

[Tom Grey - Liberty Dad]

The Age 's Tony Parkinson quoted the French writer Jean Francois Revel's Cold War comment: "A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

From http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/050815/15barone.htm

America is not perfect -- but it's the best in the world; by many measures. The Bush-haters hate that, but have nowhere better to go.

It's good and noble to defend it.

It was also good and noble to defend S. Vietnam from evil communist genocide, but it was done in a poor tactical way, including draft-slavery, military overconfidence, and illegal Cambodia bombing. Not to mention a refusal to fight in N. Vietnam, ie a refusal to "win."

Had the USA stayed only 15 more years (74-89), S. Vietnam would prolly be a thriving economy now, and there wouldn't have been Killing Fields -- but the US didn't stay; the Left anti-war folk won the argument and supported evil communists winning the war.

[David Billington]

"The narrator of this implies that Iraq is also a war "to keep us free". But how many Americans buy that?"

This is no criticism but listen to the words. The words "keeping us free" are an affirmation that there is such a thing as intrinsic value. The words "how many Americans buy that" are utilitarian. One sensibility sees the world in timeless terms. The other sees the contingency that governs the real world.

Both sensibilities possess truth and what you write I think expresses a struggle to find some balance. The danger is that in the larger culture each sensibility is retreating into itself. This danger needs to be confronted.

[Jay.Mac]

David- again, thanks for a great post.

I can't speak for Red State conservative support for the war, but from reading the blogs I do and kowing what I do, I'd guess that they realise Saddam was a threat to the stability of the region, that he had sponsored terrorism in the past, that he had failed to abide by the terms of the Gulf War peace deal he signed up to, that he was engaged in subverting the sanctions against him, that he was breaking the Gulf War agreement by developing weaponised drone aircraft and long range missiles, that he harboured terrorists and that he might one day supply said terorrists with WMD.

They might also support the war because American troops fought and died to liberate the Iraqi people from a dictator and to provide them with free elections. Perhaps they don't want to see that sacrifice being thrown away by pulling out the troops now and seeing the fledgling Iraqi democracy collapsing under the weight of Islamist terrorism.

Perhaps they also realise that in a post 9/11 world, terrorism can strike anywhere from the work place to the school yard (Beslan)- and despite what many on the left will say about Bush fighting "his daddy's war", Iraq is very much a part of the war against terrorism.

Richard Aubrey is right David- you do yourself a disservice by implying that Red Staters don't understand that their personal safety is linked to success in Iraq.

Red Staters aren't stupid, they do understand the complex nature of the world and the issue of Iraq in it. Perhaps it could even be said that they understand it better than the Blue Staters that want to bring the troops home now despite the effect such a move would have on the region.

It's not hard to find out about the effort American troops go to in Iraq (try reading Chrnkoff's Good News From Iraq) or to learn about their fight against mass murderers (Michael Yon). The vast majority of the men and women serving in Iraq believe in their mission and they see that by their efforts they can improve life for the people of Iraq.

Freedom isn't free, as many say. Read BlackFive and learn about some of the sacrifices soldiers have made fighting this war- read too about how their courage and determination is not diminished. It should tell you something that the people whose lives are actually on the line support the war. If they can, why can't those who proclaim to "support the troops"? Why can't they REALLY support the troops and highlight the good, honourable work that they are doing regardless of their opinions of the war itself. It's not hard to say "I don't think we should have gone to war, but look at the fantastic job that the troops are doing". Is it?

Why, instead, do they call it an illegal war, why do they slander American soldiers with wholesale slughter of innocent Iraqi civilians, the very same people they are giving their lives and limbs for?

Dan says "Evaluating the nobility of a war cannot be a matter of compiling moving anecdotes from noble soldiers performing deeds of valor and personal sacrifice, and selflessly protecting the innocent. Those things occur on both sides - but surely both causes can't be equally noble or just, can they?"

Here's the problem, Dan- we're not saying both sides are noble- what noble deeds have the "insurgents" in Iraq performed? Was it the head choppings? The murder and mutilation of four contractors in Fallujah? Was it driving car bombs into crowds of children? Blowing up men waiting to apply for jobs? Blowing up crowded markets? What's there noble cause- to establish a Taliban-like regime, to reinstate the Baathist dictatorship?

There's no doubting the nobility of the American solider- take LTC Kurilla dragging a captured would-be suicide bomber into cover while being fired upon by terrorists (see Michael Yon's blog for details). He could have run and left that man to be gunned down by his supposed comrades. Instead he risked his life to take him to safety, because he felt it was his duty to take care of the prisoner in his custody.

Dan also contends that the aim of establishing democracy "is actively resisted by a substantial portion of the country, and has only the half-hearted and ultimately transient support of most of the rest".

Seems to me that the Baathists are very much a minority in Iraq whose terrorist activities are supplemented by foreign fighters (and the pair now seem to be fighting one another as the Shias realise that the foreigners have no regard whatsoever for Iraq), that the majority Sunnis and Kurds would be getting along very nicely without them. It seems to that 8 million people who risked their lives to vote would also disagree that democracy has "half-hearted" support.

[chaos7023]

I'm getting tired of all these arguments.

The chickenhawk argument is tired. The military is under civilian control for myriad good reasons. Being a soldier is no more a prerequisite to being commander in chief (who has civilian control of that force) than being a city's police officer is a prerequisite for being that city's mayor (who has civilian control of that force).

Which brings me to the second tired argument, that any disenchantment with Iraq War II is the moral equivalent of wanting Saddam to remain in power.

I reluctantly supported this war. Reluctantly because history has a lot to stay about fighting two-front wars, very little of it good, and I had an unease with how we handled the UN and potential allies. My bases for support were, first and foremost, the now-discredited intelligence about WMD; secondly on the belief that democratization of the Middle East would reap dividends. That and a fierce desire to kick the #!$% out of Osama and his cronies is why I support the action in Afghanistan. It's a classic lefty argument that tacitly supporting tin pot dictators and other bad governments leads to trouble, which shows you just how much politics has been turned on its head recently.

Back to the disenchantment equals "I Love Saddam" argument. What really gets me is the "Bush kept saying this was for democracy, not WMD" crowd's failure to answer this question: Is there some magic reason that democracy in the Middle East couldn't spread from Afghanistan? I thought the Iraq War was primarily because we didn't want to end up under a mushroom cloud. Wasn't that the argument the president and Colin Powell both made at the UN? Silly me. What's the answer now?

As noble as it may be, because our soldiers are doing good in Iraq isn't a sufficient answer. Our soldiers would be doing good if, for example, they were in Darfur saving the Sudanese who are getting bombed by their own government. I don't hear anyone suggesting that we have an invasion to do that, how about you? Yet I don't think any of us really wants that government in power. Same with Saddam. I can be glad that he's out of power and concerned about what's happening in Iraq. They're not mutually exclusive.

I understand that we're there now, and we can't turn back time. It's important that we do this right. But spare me the getting rid of Saddam puffery, there are plenty of bad people in the world and a lot of them are leading countries. I'm interested in spreading democracy strategically and in our best interests, not just because it's the right thing to do. Spare me the chickenhawk tripe. Our last president didn't serve in the military and it's very apparent from our last election that our military doesn't care that our current president and vice president didn't. I'm interested in what's going right, what's going wrong, and how we fix it, not a bunch of worn-out namecalling.

[Ed Poinsett]

For eight years, the Clinton Administration pushed the idea of Saddam's WMD. The UN inspectors were thrown out in 1998 without ever being allowed access to sites they wanted to inspect. Everyone was convinced of Iraq's WMD. In hindsight that was somewhat wrong, but Bush could not take the chance that it was right. Had he not attacked and there had been another Chemical or Biological attack (remember Anthrax in Washington DC and New Jersey?) he would have been crucified for not attacking.

Bush inherited Clinton's Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 when he became president. Bush was still governor of Texas when the plans to invade Iraq were being developed. Eight months after Bush took office, we had 9/11. Bush drew a line in the sand and said enough is enough. The American people overwhelmingly supported him. The Congress supported him. The UN wanted something done.

He cleaned out the terrorist camps in Afganistan and told Saddam "give up your WMD". Saddam said screw you Mr. President. You want to blame the Iraq War on someone...try Saddam Hussein. He could've come clean, and Bush would never have had the political support to go in. Saddam challenged him and the rest is history.

[Jay.Mac]

Sorry- just realised my mistake- mixed up Sunnis and Shias in the latter part of my argument there. My apologies.

[Bill Barnes]

Reality is far more complicated and mixed and difficult to summarize than songs and patriotic enthusiasm can allow. The longer any war goes on, the more the bad predominates over the good, on all sides.

The Economist, 12/29/04, "When deadly force bumps into hearts and minds"

"If anyone gets too close to us we fucking waste them," says a bullish [U.S. Marine] lieutenant [in Ramadi]. "It's kind of a shame, because it means we've killed a lot of innocent people." ... "It gets to a point where you can't wait to see guys with guns, so you start shooting everybody... It gets to a point where you don't mind the bad stuff you do."
... When fired upon, they retaliate by blitzing whichever buildings they think the fire is coming from: charred shells now line Ramadi's main streets.
....
...armies can be good at war-fighting or good at peacekeeping but rarely good at both. And when America's well-drilled and well-fed fighters attempt subtler tasks than killing people, problems arise. At peacekeeping, peace-enforcing or policing, call it what you will, they are often inept. Even the best of them seem ignorant of the people whose land they are occupying .... Often American troops despair of their Iraqi interlocutors, observing that they "are not like Americans." American marines and GIs frequently display contempt for Iraqis, civilian or official.
....
.., American commanders have abandoned the pretense of winning the love of Iraqis ahead of the scheduled vote. "Our broad intent is to keep pressure on the insurgents as we head into elections," says [U.S. commander-in-chief] General Casey. "This is not about winning hearts and minds; we're not going to do that here in Iraq. It's about giving Iraqis the opportunity to govern themselves."

See Evan Wright (embedded with a Marine battalion for six weeks as it fought its way to Baghdad, blowing away any Iraqi who approached them or was spotted in an area from which fire came), Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War, Putnam.

London Review of Books, Vol. 27 No. 15 dated 4 August 2005

Looking for Someone to Kill
Patrick Cockburn

Suicide bombs blow up with the regularity of an artillery barrage in Baghdad. I no longer always go up onto the roof of the al-Hamra Hotel, where I am living, to see the black smoke rising and to try to work out where the bomb went off. On a single day recently 12 suicide bombs exploded in the city, killing at least 30 people.
The streets are unusually empty. Many Iraqis have decided that the best way to survive is to stay at home or, if they have the money, to leave the country. A sick friend spent hours ringing up surgeries only to be told in each case that the doctor had gone to Jordan, Syria or Iran. Those who stay in Baghdad often don't go to work until 10 a.m. because suicide bombers, though prepared to work all hours, seem to favour the morning rush hour.
It is only when a bomb explodes in a place where I might have been or when the atrocity is particularly grotesque that I pay much attention. One day three bombers – one in a vehicle, two on foot – attacked the entrance to the Green Zone normally used by journalists attending press conferences. A surviving policeman said that one bomb was concealed in a coffin strapped to the roof of a van. The driver had got through a checkpoint by saying he was delivering a body to the police forensic laboratory.
Few of the bombers are Iraqi (so they say), though the number may be increasing. But the organisation, the vehicles, the explosives, the detonators, the safe houses and the intelligence must all be home-grown. Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister, told me that the Iraqi army recently found a workshop capable of turning out seventy cars rigged to explode every day. He was expecting an attack on his ministry, a tall white building in the centre of Baghdad, and had just moved into a new house after a vehicle packed with nearly a tonne of explosives had been found near his home. He showed me with some pride a photograph of heavy artillery shells and a torpedo looted from a naval arsenal, spread out on the ground after they had been defused and removed from the bomber's car.
According to Iraqi government intelligence, bombers are given a primary target, but if they can't reach it they drive around Baghdad looking for someone else to kill. They are always told never to come back. Some buildings have been hit again and again, the army recruitment centre at the old al-Muthana airport no fewer than seven times. Every time I drive past there I see hundreds of young men, dressed in white robes and flip-flops, probably from southern Iraq, waiting to be interviewed. The guards try to herd them away, shouting: ‘You'll make yourselves targets.' But they are desperate for jobs and frightened of losing their place in the queue. A few weeks ago a young man started making a speech to the would-be recruits, complaining that they were being forced to wait while successful applicants were paying bribes. Nodding their heads in agreement, the volunteers gathered around the speaker. When a large enough crowd had assembled he pressed a switch and blew himself up, along with 25 of those listening to him.
Gloom is deeper in Baghdad now than at any time since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Even Iraqi officials in the relative safety of the Green Zone, once invariably optimistic, are beginning to despair. It is not only the increase in the number of suicide bombs. There is a water shortage in some parts of the city. Electricity supply is down to five hours a day. People buy small generators for $200, but these work only the lights and the television and do not provide enough power for air conditioners, though the temperature reaches 45ºC most days. To keep cool at this time of year people used to sleep on the roofs of their houses. But this has become dangerous: prowling US helicopters may suspect a sleeping figure of being a sniper lying in wait for a US patrol.
Hatred between Sunni and Shia Arabs has been intensifying over the past few months. Iraqis used to claim that sectarianism had been fomented or exacerbated by Saddam. In reality the tension between Sunni, Shia and Kurd has always shaped Iraqi politics. All the exiled parties returning after the fall of Saddam had a sectarian or ethnic base. The Sunnis opposed the US invasion, the Kurds supported it and the Shias, 60 per cent of the population, hoped to use it to give their community a share of power at last.
The army and police recruits killed by the suicide bombers are mostly Shia. Al-Qaida in Iraq, the shadowy group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, denounces the Shia as apostates. There are also near daily massacres of working-class Shias. Now the Shias have started to strike back. The bodies of Sunnis are being found in rubbish dumps across Baghdad. ‘I was told in Najaf by senior leaders that they have killed upwards of a thousand Sunnis,' an Iraqi official said. Often the killers belong, at least nominally, to the government's paramilitary forces, including the police commandos. These commandos seem increasingly to be operating under the control of certain Shias, who may be members of the Badr Brigade, the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the country's largest militia, with up to seventy thousand men.
The commandos, whose units have macho names such as Wolf Brigade and Lion Brigade, certainly look and act like a militia. They drive around in pick-up trucks, shooting into the air to clear the traffic, and are regarded with terror in Sunni districts. In one raid the commandos arrested nine Sunni Arabs who had taken a friend with a bullet wound in his leg to hospital. (The commandos claimed they were suspected insurgents, even though wounded resistance fighters generally keep away from hospitals.) The men were left in the back of a police vehicle which was parked in the sun with the air conditioning switched off: all were asphyxiated. Zarqawi has announced that he is setting up a group called the Omar Brigade specifically to target the Badr militia.
Unlike the death squads that used to operate in Latin America, the commandos rarely try to conceal their responsibility for killings. They arrive in full uniform, a garish green and yellow camouflage, at the homes of former Sunni officials and arrest them. A few days later the bodies – sometimes savagely tortured, with eyes gouged out and legs broken – turn up in the morgue.
All this has created terror in Sunni neighbourhoods, particularly among the hundreds of thousands who served under the old regime. The Badr Brigade, which fought on the Iranian side in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, is often said to be an arm of Iranian intelligence determined to settle old scores. Air force pilots believe they are being singled out for assassination because they are suspected of having bombed Iranian cities nearly twenty years ago. This may not be true, but fear of the death squads is certainly pushing the Sunni community as a whole towards sympathy with the insurgents, who are seen as armed fellow Sunnis who might protect them.
More than two years after the US invasion the Iraqi state remains extraordinarily weak. At 5 a.m. on one day in mid-June, resistance fighters walked into Dohra, a large district of south Baghdad, and took it over: the local police disappeared. The insurgents retreated only when US helicopters arrived overhead. The army and police are often less well armed than the insurgents. Yet immense sums of money have been spent on training and equipment. ‘The Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of the Interior spent $5.2 billion under the interim government of Iyad Allawi,' a senior official told me, ‘but we don't know what happened to the money.' He added sorrowfully that he had asked the ministry of the interior for 50 pistols for the presidential bodyguards; he was told they had none.
The most notorious scandal in Iraq at the moment is the government's purchase of 24 military helicopters as part of a $300 million deal with a Polish engineering company. They were paid for up front. When an Iraqi inspection team went to Poland, they found that the helicopters were 28- year-old Soviet army machines that, according to the manufacturer, should have been put out of commission three years ago. The Iraqis are now trying to get their money back. The Ministry of Defence says it is investigating forty questionable contracts, for everything from machine-guns to armoured vehicles. One shipment of MP5 machine-guns was received at a cost of $3500 a gun: the guns turned out to be Egyptian copies that should have cost $200 each.
Defence procurement in the Middle East, as in much of the world, is corrupt. But in most countries usable equipment, however overpriced, does eventually turn up. In Iraq the corruption is on a different scale: often the money disappears entirely and nothing is received in return. For two years the Iraqi administration has been less a government than a racket, as Ed Harriman has made clear (LRB, 7 July). The corruption doesn't stop with defence. Laith Kubba, a senior aide to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, cites the case of ‘a power station ordered at a cost of $500 million but the contract details covered just one sheet of paper. A ministerial committee refused to sign that contract so the minister sacked them and appointed a committee which would sign.' Salam al- Maliki, the transport minister, says: ‘Everything has been stolen in the ministry bar its name.' Commuter buses were sold for spare parts and new trucks simply disappeared. Even the bed- sheets for the police guarding the ministry were stolen.
The looting of Baghdad which began in the days after Saddam's fall has never really ended. ‘Security is our biggest problem and after that corruption,' said Kamaran Karadaghi, President Jalal Talabani's chief of staff. Another official warned me against investigating corruption. In Iraq, he said, more money had been stolen by a few people ‘than a Colombian drug lord could make in a year'.
A few Iraqi officials have been suspended; a few arrest warrants have been issued. Several of the more dubious arms procurement deals were negotiated by Ziad Tareq Cattan, the former deputy defence minister. Returning to Iraq after 27 years in Europe, he was rapidly promoted by Paul Bremer, the US envoy. He was sacked in June and a court order for his arrest issued on 7 July. He is currently in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan and claims innocence. He argues that while he worked there the defence ministry was under the control of US generals: he could not have committed the alleged frauds without their knowledge. ‘We could do nothing in the ministry without decisions from the generals,' Cattan was quoted as saying. ‘We couldn't move a single soldier from east Baghdad to west Baghdad without their permission. We had to ask them, to plead with them for one machine-gun.'
Nobody knows how many soldiers and policemen actually turn up for work. Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish political leader, says that an army unit supposedly numbering 2200 men was sent to Kirkuk. The Kurds counted them: there were just 300 men in the unit. Nobody knew what had happened to the other 1900. ‘They say that there are 150,000 men in the army and police,' Othman says, ‘but I believe the real figure is 40,000.' The rest either appear only to draw their pay or never existed in the first place. Establishing the real strength of the army is important because the US and Britain want to reduce the number of their troops. The British want to decrease the size of their force in the south from 8500 to 3000 over the next nine months. In cities such as Basra and Amarah this means handing over power to the local Shia militias: the Badr Brigade and the Mehdi Army.
The Iraqi government is embattled. Aside from the Kurdish parties and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, none of the parties making up Ibrahim al-Jaafari's administration has a strong popular base. Government members live in the Green Zone and are as cut off from the rest of Baghdad as they would be if they lived in a different country. Entering al-Qadassiyah, the fortified compound where ministers live, is a dangerous business. Problems start even before you reach the first checkpoint in the perimeter wall. As we approached, a blue-uniformed Iraqi policeman, with US troops standing beside him, waved at us frantically. He was trying to warn us that if we didn't get out of the car fifty yards in front of the checkpoint to hold up our ID cards the troops would open fire.
Members of the government, often exiles who have spent decades abroad, don't understand the depth of the unpopularity of the occupation. Iraqi Arabs, Shia as well as Sunni, blame the US for everything that has gone wrong since Saddam's fall. In Baghdad everybody I asked on the streets said they wanted the US soldiers to leave. ‘I feel sure that most of the problems inside the city are made by these troops,' Bassem Mehdi Khalid, a driver, said. ‘They close the streets or drive the wrong way down them. They fire in all directions when they are attacked. They do much more harm than good.'
Mahmoud Othman is convinced that US troops should pull out in two stages, first out of the cities and then out of Iraq. He argues that the main political justification for the guerrillas is that they are fighting against a foreign occupier. Take this justification away and Iraq would begin to return to peace. At the same time, Othman says, talks should take place with the resistance movement. Maybe he is right. But the administration is still wholly reliant on the 135,000 American troops. The few government battalions ready to fight are recruited from Kurdish or Shia militiamen and are detested in Sunni areas. As sectarian hatreds deepen it would not take much for districts of Baghdad to barricade their streets against Sunni suicide bombers or Shia death squads.
The chances of a unitary Iraq emerging from the conflict are dwindling. The Kurds, triumphant after fighting for half a century, are not going to give up the oil city of Kirkuk or abandon a level of autonomy close to independence. The Shias want as much power as they can get. The Sunnis have shown by their armed resistance that they can destabilise Iraq for as long as they want. But the insurgents will not be able to spread resistance beyond the Sunni community because of the savage attacks by the suicide bombers on Shia mosques and children playing in the street in Shia districts. The appeal of Iraqi nationalism is ebbing.
There is unlikely to be peace in Iraq while US forces remain. Their presence fuels the war. There are frequent leaks from Washington and London about reducing the number of troops. In the al- Rashid Hotel on the edge of the Green Zone, US officials meet repeatedly, to the annoyance of the Iraqi government, with the former Baathist leaders they were trying to arrest two years ago. The Americans don't have a long-term plan for Iraq. Their main priority is for the White House's actions to be presented in the US as a success. One Iraqi official complains that the Americans make up policy as they go along: ‘They make a mistake and then they try to correct it by making a bigger mistake.' American policy in Iraq has always been disjointed, since it has always been determined by the domestic political needs of the White House. But, as the war enters its third year, the extent of American failure in Iraq is becoming more and more difficult to conceal.

Patrick Cockburn has been reporting from Iraq since 1978. His most recent book is The Broken Boy

[Dan Kervick]

They are small people with small thoughts and suspicious minds, that cannot think that others can have motives more noble, and visions far grander, than their own. President Bush, for all his failings, has repeatedly mentioned in his speeches that the freedom of the Iraqi and Afghani people were one of the reasons for smashing the Taliban and deposing Saddam Hussein. It should come as no surprise that many of our soldiers, sailors and airmen, who joined an all-volunteer military, share the same sense of service towards America and humanity that Luke Stricklin feels.

Well, there is that old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I have not the slightest doubt that many of the participants in this war, and its supporters, are animated by noble and grand visions, and some are driven by their visions to perform acts of selfless sacrifice. This recognition helps little in the evaluation of the war. People with grand visons and the best of motivations are perfectly capable of producing lousy results; and sometimes people with low intentions bungle their way into success.

You know, I have some grand visions and deep political ideals myself. I sometimes write lengthy pieces in which I express my own, alternative hopes for the future, and suggest the sort of grand national strategies that should be pursued in order to achieve them, along with ideas for global activism. Since I am just a random blog commentator, and the comments are scattered all over the internet, I generally cannot expect people to know what these views are. But I must strenuously resist the suggestion that those, like myself, who do not share the ideals of the "muscular democracy promoters" - or wahtever we are calling them now - are simply selfish, or lacking in compassion or vision. The frequent expression of this view is in my estimation, a symptom of self-indulgent vanity and ignorant, and ill-informed moral superiority. It's the increasingly desperate complaint of those who are so absorbed in their own worldview that they cannot fathom any moral vision but their own, and thus imagine that all their opponents suffer from some sort of moral degeneracy or weakness.

My own grand vision is of a peaceful and prosperous community of nations, united in a framework of law and mutual respect, and animated by a spirit of universal brotherhood and interdependence. Such a world is still a long way off, and will be the work of many generations. In my judgment, its construction will depend mainly on the gradual accumulation of many small, painstaking and patietly executed steps.

I know others, who are partial to the so called "democratic peace theory", also share this vision, but are convinced that it is not possible without prior democratization of the globe. And some believe that that democratization should be pursued by aggressive means, including forceful military intervention in poltically recalcitrant countries. I respect this view, and the seriousness of those who hold it. But I simply disagree with them. I think they overestimate somewhat the importance of democratization nin the achievement of global law and order. But more importantly, I think they underestimate greatly the harmful, counterproductive impact of the vigilante measures they advocate on the achievement of such an order.

The problem with pieces such as David's is that, as several of the comments here show, they lead to outbursts of unthinking emotionalism and sentimentality which don't advance understanding or contribute to rational deliberation about alternative courses of action. I also had a moving experience driving home in the car yesterday. I listened to a long news report about one of the soldiers from Ohio who was killed recently. This soldier was a local hero from a small town. The report was neither an "antiwar" nor or a "pro-war" report. It was simply a report on the impact of this young man's life and death on the town. The reporter interviewed people around the town, most of whom were both proud and upset over their loss, and let them do the talking. There was no polemical edge to te report at all.

The whole report was very affecting, and moved me to tears. But you know what? In the end I didn't learn anything I didn't already know. I know there are lots of brave Americans who have selflessly given their lives in war; I know that their families and friends are usually proud of them; I know it hurts when they die. I know that many Americans in the past have sacrificed and died for my freedom

I arrived home and settled down, and the world was the same as it was before. There is this war going on in Iraq, you see; and the decisions involved in what to do about it were just as complex and perplexing as before. I sat down to read some of the articles and comments on this site, and add my own comments. And the fact that I had had a good cry over the noble sacrifices and tragic loss of young Americans had no lasting effect on my views. These things are part of every war, and they do nothing to tell you whether the war is a good war or a bad war, or help you decide grave issues about the direction of national policy.

We are citizens in a democracy, and thus our duty includes the obligation to participate in the process of evaluating the various policy alternatives that are presented to us. The consequences of these decisions are momentous, and the lives and well-being of many millions of people are ultimately involved, not just the life of one soldier and songwriter, or one young man in Ohio. So, we must attempt to weigh all the evidence available to us, debate the matter, and try to bring about the best outcome we can.

[Dan Kervick]

Dan also contends that the aim of establishing democracy "is actively resisted by a substantial portion of the country, and has only the half-hearted and ultimately transient support of most of the rest".

Not exactly Jay Mac. What I was refrring to was the task of establishing and propping up the new central government in Iraq, along the lines pushed by the US. I think many Kurds want democracy - but what they want is to live in a democratic republic of Kurdistan. I think many of the Shiites also want democracy of a sort - but what they want is a democratic Islamic republic, organized under Shiite-style Islamic law. These are the people whose support for the current framework I judge to be halfhearted and transient. They were happy to vote in the election, because they see seizing hold of the current temporary arrangement as a step along the path to what they really want.

As for the Sunni Arabs, it's hard to get a fix on them. Some may want something they call "democracy" - but it only rarely seems to be something like what we in the United States use that word to refer to. I have to say that my overall impression is that most are on the whole comfortable with their traditional forms of government. The task of imposing democratic government on that one, violent hold-out region seems increasingly futile to me. If they really do want democracy, they are going to have to figure out how to make one for themselves.

[Angryman]

"Mr. Adesnik is in the middle of school, his priorities are finishing his degree"

No shit.

I find it absolutely hilarious that the only argument any of the other members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders here can muster against Adesnik's not being a Chickenhawk is that they find the label "childish."

Because, to them, any opinion that doesn't line up with their worship of Dear Leader's Imperial Game is "childish."

Why should I take any of the chumps writing this swill seriously, when the great majority of them don't have the balls to back up their hawkishness.

Oh, and as for "Tall Dave's" less than apt rejoinder:

"Be careful about throwing around that "chickenhawk" stuff. Did you put on a police uniform before you asked them to put themselves in harm's way for you? Or are you a chickencop?"

If I had participated in tricking the cops into a dangerous situation, and after the trick was discovered I continued to insist that they stay there in that dangerous situation, while things got worse and worse for the cops, and I refused to go in there and help them out, yeah, I'd be a Chickencop.

So I guess we can chalk "Tall Dave" up to the Chickenhawk column.

Oh and Adesnik, before I forget:

1-800-GO-ARMY

[doc]

“…The danger is that in the larger culture each sensibility is retreating into itself. This danger needs to be confronted. “

David –

succinct post. as one wit put it after the 2004 elections, we have become “…the Divided States of America”. we need to confront the schism before we implode. it will not be easy:

…from one perspective the neo-cons seem to display disconcerting similarities with america’s enemies: a fear and loathing of all things modern, the rise of fundamentalism/evangelicals in general and government institutions in particular (thinking about the military academies here), and the hatred expressed toward secular life, a rise in religious intolerance and the deep belief that they – and only they – are right.

…from another perspective the liberal left displays overt signs of dissolution and moral decrepitude: they scorn as dunces the racists, sexists and HMV-driving masses and, too often, those who aren’t “in-the-know”; their demands for new environmental laws and civil rights are all fine and good, but acknowledgement of progress made is never forthcoming, or is tempered by cries for ‘more’,; the iffy belief (“Could be wrong…”) that they – and only they – are right, and sermons of tolerance from those perceived as ‘godless’ never go over well…

more, the divide is geographic: blue carried both coasts and that part of the great lakes that butts up against canada. red carried the middle (and florida…but not here). urban versus rural, definitively different sensibilities. for example, the cities along the coasts have never been homogenous, and several of them have spent hundreds of years dealing with the rest of the world and its citizens, have welcomed and sheltered (according to various ‘official’ policies) all emigrants and their practices and so are used to a constant shift of cultures – they have to be, themselves a product of ethnic and cultural assimilation.

rural is just that - to a large degree it seems to need or want any part of the coasts or their cities, much less the multiculturalism that they stand for…except to visit now and again, perhaps in leisure, perhaps to confirm their views that all those folk are going to hell in a hand-basket. rural is the same everywhere, it is the heart of homogeneousness. you could say, within this context, that god is rural.

the above is an obvious simplification – it’s really not just Us vs. the Other - but those components are there, also, which makes movement toward a middle ground even more problematic.

so, David, does the left redefine the imagery that has, of late, mugged it: restates (for example) patriotism as an american attribute, not the sole province of one group or another? does the left say, ‘You know bloody what? You DON’T have to curtail civil rights wholesale in order to fight terrorism” and stand up? does the left reach out to the right – knowing full well the dangers inherent in allowing the growing divide in this country to continue is far more important than who gets elected next or who sits on SCOTUS – to fashion a détente?

or…is the left just the reverse of the right, and both are only interested in ruling – if a country divided makes that easier, so be it?

what’s the solution?

[doc]

wow...that changes everything:

"rural is just that - to a large degree it seems NOT to need or want any part of the..."

sorry for the typo.

[David Adesnik]

I am much obliged for all of you for taking the time to comment so extensively on this guest-blogger's post.

Rather than add my own two cents here, I think I will either do an update or another post on this subject later on this evening.

Finally, a brief comment on the "chickenhawk" issue. I just spent some time on Google trying to find a link to Peter Beinart's superb column on this subject from a year or two ago in The New Republic. If any of you can find the link, please post it here in another comment box.

Anyhow, Beinart's basic point is that the chickenhawk argument is the ultimate form of illiberal and anti-democratic logic of which anyone on the left should be ashamed to identify him or herself with. The essence of the chickenhawk argument is that one's opinions are only valid if one has had a specific experience.

In contrast, liberalism identifies logic and evidence as the essence of political argumentation. The primacy of logic and evidence explains why all citizens are entitled to have opinions, rather than just those with certain experiences.

Finally, there is the ultimate irony of the chickenhawk argument. If only those who risk their lives can judge the merits of a war, then the anti-war left would have to concede that their own opinions are far less valid than those of the soldiers in Iraq, many of whom, like Luke Stricklin, seem to believe that they are fighting for a noble cause.

[doc]

...belive the article in question is here.

[fat sam]

Dan K, once again, some excellent points. my sentiments, only better written.

[doc]

...no...it's note the right link - intersting take, though.

wait one...

[doc]

okay...i give up: no one seems to have posted it in toto on their site - the most i can find is from a post on the 'Little Green Footballs' site...

"Peter Beinart in the New Republic delivered the philosophical coup de grace when he pointed out that the Chickenhawk cluckers "deny that intellect can transcend experience.""

i imagine that TNR has it archived: anyone a member?

[Dan Kervick]

I think it's here.

[Josh]

The solution to the chickenhawk argument is to point out that the person trying to make it is a chickendove. So come on angryman, how much time did you spend in the military to form a rigidly anti-war view?

[Greg Priddy]

I was wondering why there were such an unusually large number of comments on this post, and so many names I'd never seen before (since most of the comments up to now have been from a relatively small number of people) -- so I checked the SiteMeter data -- the overwhelming majority of today's traffic is coming in from Instapundit!!!

How often does a blog sponsored by a couple of respected progressive organizations that I generally like (Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation) get lauded on Instapundit? As far as I'm concerned, this is yet more evidence of the convergence between the liberal hawk/"muscular idealist" wing of the Democratic intelligentsia and the noeconservatives -- problem is, according to a new poll from Public Agenda/Foreign Affairs, public opinion doesn't seem to be with you.

In fact, I think Steve Clemons' contact at The Nation has it right -- "realism has become the new foreign policy ideology."

[Greg Priddy]

"new liberal foreign policy ideology" -- it should have read...

[David Adesnik]

Greg, don't hold it against CAP or TCF or even Democracy Arsenal that Glenn Reynolds linked to this post. I am just a guest blogger and it was my doing entirely, since I sent a heads-up message over to Instapundit.

[Greg Priddy]

I'm not holding it against them -- they're both highly respected progressive organizations. (I actually worked at TCF for a year in a junior staff capacity back in the 1990s.)

But it does strike me as yet more evidence of the ideological convergence between the "muscular idealist" Democrats and neoconservatives.

[Greg Priddy]

The timeline here is interesting too. The comments overnight were generally negative -- thoughtful replies from Dan Kervick and Cal, a quickie from Doc, and the usual stuff from Angryman. Then you give Glenn Reynolds a heads up and get a stream of conservative "ringers" headed over to pummel them in the comments.

So here's the take away headline, my friends -- "Liberal Hawk Democrat Calls In Republican Reinforcements to Pummel Progressives"

Again, I respect your right to argue for your opinions (and I disagree with Angryman's 'chickenhawk' stuff), but this is a legitimate point that Democrats at the grassroots level reading blogs need to understand -- the Democrats' liberal hawk/"muscular idealist" wing (who don't strike me as being too numerous outside the party's intelligentsia) are coming into convergence with the neoconservatives.

[harmon]

Dan rather perceptively observed:

"I think the "red state" patriotism you describe is ultimately even simpler than you paint it, and is not really just a red state phenomenon. You see it in small towns across America. I know I encounter it up here in New England. It goes something like this: "Your county calls; you answer the call; you fight. That's just what citizens and soldiers do. You have some faith that the country is good, and that the cause is just; and you hope the fight is for the best. But who knows? That's not the essence of the citizen's duty. The fact that I am fighting for my country is all the nobility that my cause needs."

But Stephen Decatur said it better:

"Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong."

The difference is that Dan's version is a bit equivocal, and to the extent that it is, misses the target by just that much. Too "nuanced," shall we say.

The older I get, the more I understand: Stephen nailed it.

[harmon]

Greg said:

"the Democrats' liberal hawk/"muscular idealist" wing (who don't strike me as being too numerous outside the party's intelligentsia) are coming into convergence with the neoconservatives."

I don't understand the parenthetical phrase. I would have thought that there are NO "liberal hawk/muscular idealists" in the Democratic intelligentsia. Am I reading this right?

Actually, I question the meaningful existence of ANY LH/MIs in the Democratic party. The last I saw of that rare bird was Zell Miller, Hillary to the illusory contrary notwithstanding.

I would be interested to know who these LI/MI Democrats are. Not that I think much of any so-called intelligentsia, but the others might be worth some attention. I'm old enough to remember Scoop, and I sure would feel a bit safer if I knew that there were some more Democrats like him around these days...

[Robert Drake]

But Stephen Decatur said it better:

"Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong."

The difference is that Dan's version is a bit equivocal, and to the extent that it is, misses the target by just that much. Too "nuanced," shall we say.

The older I get, the more I understand: Stephen nailed it.

"'My country, right or wrong', is a thing that no patriot would think of saying. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.'" G.K. Chesterton

Decatur articulates a rather lame, almost infantile idea. I would recommend Thoreau's Civil Disobedience as an antidote to that sort of clap-trap. Every war criminal that ever was, believed to some extent, that no matter how repugnant, or immoral, or misguided, or counterproductive, or just plain stupid, his actions, it was justified because his motherland sanctioned it, or put him in a position to commit it. Anyone who believes that a person must subjugate his own moral, or intellectual will, to the whims of some pseudo-patriotism is frankly dangerous. Patroitism is just another word for fealty to a political leadership, because that's ultimately who you're fighting for. Those amber waves of grain don't command soldiers to take lives, and sacrifice their own, political leaders do, and if history has taught us anything, national leaders often conduct themselves in a manner that is at best amoral, and at worst, criminal.

[harmon]

Robert wrote:

"Every war criminal that ever was, believed to some extent, that no matter how repugnant, or immoral, or misguided, or counterproductive, or just plain stupid, his actions, it was justified because..." &c, &c.

Ah, yes, the old logical fallacy. Guilt by Association. The Bad Guys are patriotic, therefore patriots are bad guys. Usually followed by that quotation from Samuel Johnson, which I'm sure you know & am surprised you didn't use, and which does not mean what it is generally thought to mean.

Do you think that those of us who grasp what Decatur was saying aren't as smart or educated as you? Do you think we haven't read Thoreau and considered what he had to say? And then concluded that he's not the guy we want taking our back? Or, in fact, that Henry was a wee bit of a poseur, what with his little cabin on the lake with civilization a few steps away?

What Decatur said was not merely a simplistic patriotic utterance. It was and remains an observation that loyalty to a country like ours is, at the end, fundamental to survival. The Decaturs of the world are the ones who keep us safe, not the Thoreaus.

Oh, and about Chesterton, that specialist in the paradoxical bon mot. You are not the kind of guy that leaves his mom at the bar & goes home without her - or are you? "Gee, my mom had a few drinks so I think I'll leave her to collapse at the bar, or run over on the way home..." Chesterton blew that one.

Well, the main point of my post was not that I understand what Decatur meant, but rather, that the people Dan was talking about do, too, and more firmly than Dan described. It is fortunate for all of us.

[Dan Kervick]

Swirling around the "Chickenhawk argument" - which really isn't an argument at all but just a fairly effective taunt - is a conflict between traditional republican American ideals and attitudes, which go back to the early history of the country, and the modern US condition as a centralized, professionalized national security state.

America was supposed to be a country of republican virtue, in which national defense was a civic obligation of all able-bodied men, something like voting and political participation. The Congress, as the legitimate voice of the people authorized to make laws and set policy, was to decide whether or not to declare war, and the President's function, as the head of the executive branch, was to execute the policy established by the Congress, and command the armed forces once war had been declared. There was not supposed to be a standing national army, but armies would be raised by calling on state militias and private citizens in time of emergency.

The notion that men would belong to separate professional castes - the professional intellectuals whose job it is to argue about war, and the professional soldiers whose job it is to fight it, seems remote from the republican ideal.

These days, the main decisions in foreign and national security policy are likely to be both made and executed in the executive branch, and the Congress has been transformed into much more of a rubber-stamp body. The executive branch has accumulated a tremendous amount of power, as Congress has relinquished it, and the former has grown tremendously in size. It conducts much its business in secret, like the despotic governments of old our founders despised. The national government also maintains a huge standing military force. And we now have a division of citizens into a professional military, and those who never do any fighting. In part becaus defense has never come to be a shared burden it was envisaged as being, we have had almost perpetual war, especially since the beginning of the 20th century. Sometimes its a big war and sometimes its a small war, but our troops are almost always engaged in fighting somewhere.

This has lead to a deep ambivalence in America about some of those old republican ideals. Since decision making in the realm of war and peace has moved away from the people's branch to the much less democratic executive branch, many Americans feel less of a sense of obligation to support whatever policies are chosen, and to pull their fair share of the burden in executing them. National policy has gotten away from them.

But the old ideal still survives and has some strength. The chickenhawk taunt is not really an argument over who does and does not have the right to participate in debate - it is a shorthand way of endorsing the statement "real men don't shirk their duty in time of war and let others do the necessary fighting for them." and affixing the coward label to some individual. And particular scorn has always been reserved for those men who goad others into dangerous action, but then don't assume the risks of acting themselves. Remember the Fred MacMurray character in The Caine Mutiny? He's the one who gets the drink thrown in his face in the end.

[harmon]

Rats, I should have tied the last paragraph I wrote back to Stricklin's lyrics:

Really don't care why Bush went in to Iraq
I know what I done there and I'm damn sure proud of that.
You got somethin' bad to say about the USA
You better save it for different ears 'less you want to crawl away.

Sounds like Decatur to me...

[doc]

...well said, Dan K.

[brian]

The whole debate is surious...it assumes that the wwarb can still be won. Nonsense. ! The war is lost. In the last century ,in contests between a great power and a colonial people..the local ALWAYS won..In Ireland against the British,In vietnam against the French and the USA,in the old Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambigue,in Lebanon against the Us ,in Indonesia against the Dutch...always the locals win!!and so it will be in Iraq. The USA will be greatly reduced in its economic power,and the whole world,especially the Chinese and the Russians,that there are real limits to US power, The end of Pax Americana. The Bush administration started out with one goal and ends at the oposite end of the pitch !Goodbye American pie !

[Adan]

I know there will be a temptation to attack Dan Kervick for comparing American patriots to terrorists ...

That would be an incorrect interpretation of his comments. He was merely trying to point out the common humanity between individual soldiers on both sides of a conflict. And because of this common humanity, plus the fact that wars affect entire societies, the value and righteousness of a war can't be judged on the feelings of individual soldiers alone. Pretty easy point to understand when you see the world in more than two shades.

They are small people with small thoughts and suspicious minds, that cannot think that others can have motives more noble, and visions far grander, than their own.

It more like a recongnition that our government RARELY acts out of pure altruism when its conducts its foreign policy. Historically we have been in favor of democracy movements only when it has been advantageous to us. Liberals recognize this, and rightly view all foreign policy with suspicion. In fact, we are supporting despotic regimes at this very minute. Our government should be judged by what it does, not what it says.

President Bush, for all his failings, has repeatedly mentioned in his speeches that the freedom of the Iraqi and Afghani people were one of the reasons for smashing the Taliban and deposing Saddam Hussein.

God, that is such a lie with regards to Iraq. The war was sold from day one primarily as a war of self defense in which Saddam could avoid the war by complying with UNSCR 667. Bush publically gave Saddam's regime an out at the U.N. by saying Iraq could avoid war if it would only comply to any relevant UN resolution held against it. The fact that Bush never meant what he said makes him a liar. Further, Colin Powell's dramatic presentation was geared toward WMD, not democracy. Not to mention that Cheney's and Rice's MANY media apperances all had the same theme: WMD.

It should come as no surprise that many of our soldiers, sailors and airmen, who joined an all-volunteer military, share the same sense of service towards America and humanity that Luke Stricklin feels.

The only thing I see from former and current military personnel is an unwavering support for "America" (whatever that means to them), irrespective of its motives.

Duty to whom?
Honor for what?
Country? Or chain of command?

Our soldiers hold this nations founding ideals far higher than they do the mere land itself.

I find that very doubtful if they are not even willing to question the motives of their commander in chief and his political lackeys. Further, their hostility towards those that due leads me to believe that many of our former and current military personnel are mere brownshits in the making, susceptible to any propaganda that is dispensed on them by their beloved leadership.

[AST]

When we went back to Iraq, I thought a lot about the reasons for doing so.

The obvious one was that we needed to finish what we started in the first Gulf War. I felt that the first war was a case of Victorious Interruptus that not only made our success hollow but proved the truth of the charges that George H. W. Bush was a wimp. To me it was exactly what Kerry would have done.

Regimes like Saddam's are like cancer, you've got to get it all, or it comes back. Saddam was irrational, and erratic. He started two wars against his neighbors, the second one knowing that we couldn't allow it to stand. I suspected after the U.N. withheld its approval, that something was fishy, and now we know that Saddam had ditched his WMD programs knowing that he could always reinstitute them when he had managed to buy off enough of the UN to get the inspectors out of his country. Sic transit gloria the UN.

The second reason for overthrowing Saddam was strategic. Iraq lies at the heart of the Middle East, and the regime was low hanging fruit. We also thought that the people there want freedom from tyranny. If we could establish a working democracy there, it could have the effect of discrediting the appeal of the terrorists, which is based on the hopelessness among the people in the countries which spawn it. Much of that has been verified by events. The war intimidated Khaddafi and gave people throughout the Arab world hope that they too might have free elections.

The third reason was humanitarian, we knew that the Iraqis had suffered under Saddam, and to our shame, we had encouraged uprisings after the first war and didn't support them, except to establish the No-Fly Zones. People argued that the sanctions hurt the people more than Saddam, but the Oil For Food Program was supposed to mitigate that. The people were being hurt because Saddam preferred to use the suffering and death of his own people as an instrument of propaganda. The only real way to remove the sanctions was to eliminate Saddam and his regime.

I thought, and still think that those are all good reasons. One personal result of the war was that I felt proud of our troops again. I realized that since Vietnam, I had been thinking of our military as something to be apologized for, not because it was, but because that's all I had seen from our media. I was thrilled to see the people representing us over there and the way they conducted themselves.

Despite historically tiny casualty figures, the media has continued to portray this fight as a quagmire, and the sapping of support from the public is the result. There isn't a good way to counter that constant drip of negative news reports and criticism. The only thing that will win this is resolve. We need things like David's post to remind us that America, freedom and democracy are worth fighting and dying for, in spite of what Cindy Sheehan and MoveOn.org think. We need to recognize the siren song of our own mass media for what it is, and stick to this task.

[tom-e-lee]

The original post seems to inmply that:

1. people in Red States are hicks.

2. Everyone who lives in a Red State supports the war.

Everyone I know supports the troops. Many do not support the war.

On any given evening there is more common sense and perspective in the bar at the local VFW than all of Georgetown.

[Robert Drake]

Ah, yes, the old logical fallacy. Guilt by Association. The Bad Guys are patriotic, therefore patriots are bad guys. Usually followed by that quotation from Samuel Johnson, which I'm sure you know & am surprised you didn't use, and which does not mean what it is generally thought to mean.

It would be a logical fallacy if I were equating patriotism per se, with bad acts, I was not. The only logical fallacy in evidence is your straw man. If I had intended your meaning, Johnson would have been appropriate; Wilde's remark about patriotism being a virtue of the vicious would have been more appropriate still. I used Chesterton because the thought he was trying to convey is rather obvious, or at least it should be: patriotism that is unthinking, uncritical is dangerous. Decatur's line is banal, it knows no distinctions. Patriotism, or rather, fealty to a government's leadership is paramount, concerns about "right, or wrong" are nonexistant. That's a dangerous
mentality. History proves it.

Do you think that those of us who grasp what Decatur was saying aren't as smart or educated as you?

Where was it intimated that I thought those who disagree are lacking in cognitive ability?

Do you think we haven't read Thoreau and considered what he had to say? And then concluded that he's not the guy we want taking our back? Or, in fact, that Henry was a wee bit of a poseur, what with his little cabin on the lake with civilization a few steps away?

Thoreau recognized that the limits placed on us by our own consciences are far more profound than the demands placed on us by our governments. This is the sentiment of our founding fathers as well. It used to be a central tenet of traditional conservatism, but no more, today, conservatism is authoritarian statism with almost no regards for the ideals of republic. This is not strictly a problem of Republicans either, as evidenced by the fact that this belief system is widely held by the proprieters of this forum, self-identified progressive Democrats.

What Decatur said was not merely a simplistic patriotic utterance. It was and remains an observation that loyalty to a country like ours is, at the end, fundamental to survival. The Decaturs of the world are the ones who keep us safe, not the Thoreaus.

Unforutnately for our soldiers in peril, the Iraqi insurgents probably have their version of Decatur, too.
Iraq, right, or wrong.

[David Adesnik]

Well, my week of guest blogging is about up, so I'll be quick. I know I said that I would do another post on this issue, but I really think that the comments here cover the issue quite thoroughly.

The one point to which I want to respond is Jay.Mac's comment that "you do yourself a disservice by implying that Red Staters don't understand that their personal safety is linked to success in Iraq." (Dick Aubrey and tom-e-lee make the same point in somewhat snarkier fashion, but I'm used to Dick giving me a hard time.)

Although my phrasing was less than ideal, that is not what I meant to suggest. What I wrote was that "there is only a distant and complex relationship between my personal freedom and the war in Iraq." Instead of "distant and complex", perhaps I should've said "controversial and possibly non-existent."

Common sense might dictate that we can't let Iraq become another pre-9/11 Afghanistan. But there are a lot of unproven assumptions involved in the argument that we need Iraq to be democratic because it will help spread democracy throughout the Middle East, a development that, at some point down the road, will probably reduce the influence of terrorist ideologues in the Middle East.

I would argue that the unproven assumptions listed above rest on a solid foundation of historical analysis and persuasive logic. But they are still speculative. Thus, while I'm sure that Red State residents can understand this argument, I'm not sure that they would find it persuasive.

However, if a major contingent of Red Staters is committed, a la Luke Stricklin, to promoting democracy in Iraq as a moral end in and of itself, no speculative assumptions are required to justify the war.

[Dan Kervick]

David,

Having read the lyrics of the songs several times since you first posted them, the basis for connection you see between the attitudes of the songwriters and your own agenda is increasingly myterious to me.

I see no evidence from the lyrics of "American by God's Amazing Grace" that Mr. Stricklin is "committed to promoting democracy in Iraq" or any other abstract ideological program, or that he is even interested in such a program. He speaks vaguely of being proud of what he did there, and of helping some children in need, but that's it. You appear to be guilty of some projection in attributing to him fellowship in your particular ideological mission.

The main message of the song, as I read it, seems to be this:

"I've been to Iraq, and it was really miserable. I'm not sure why we went and don't really care, but I tried to do my best while I was there. The main thing I learned there is this: Iraq is a lot worse than America! It is hell on earth. The whole time I was there I dreamed of getting home.

So all you people who think America has problems, take it for me: the problems in America are nothing compared to the hell that is Iraq. Don't say anything bad about America to my face, or I'll punch your lights out."

The first song, "Arlington", has even less to do with ideological debates about democracy promotion in Iraq. It is a modern variation the classic theme of "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," turned out in an American idiom. It suggests that by fighting and dying in Iraq, the soldier has earned a place among the heroic, sainted ancestors who fought to defend American freedom, and now abides in a hallowed place among the elect. But honestly, based on the song itself, one would have to describe the singer as somewhat detached from, and uninterested in the particularities of the Iraq war and its purposes, and more interested in the mystical significance of the act of sacrifice itself, and what it achieves for the one who sacrifices. To the extent that it does address a political purpose for the war, that purpose is implied to be the defense of American freedom, not some good brought to Iraq, "for it's own sake."

[Jay.Mac]

David- Thanks for the reply.

I think that for many Red Staters/conservatives, the question of staying the course in Iraq is more to do with defeating an enemy that we're currently engaged with. Yes, we want to see a functioning democracy in Iraq, and that is the goal that is currently being worked towards. However, we also recognise that quite apart from a working, free Iraq we're actually fighting a war against terrorists who are opposed to everything the West stands for (free, tolerant democracies). To withdraw troops while that fight is going on would be a huge mistake because they will simply see it as a victory for terrorist tactics. That's my primary concern, and one that I believe many conservatives share. A free Iraq is a major part of defeating our enemy but we are also engaging them militarily- and winning.

The nay-sayers had predicted that Afghanistan was unwinnable (cue Vietnam analogies) but we won. The same 'quagmire' was applied to the invasion of Iraq- and yet again, we won. Very speedily and with remarkably low casualities.

The same people are now claiming that Iraq in untenable, that we should pull the troops out immediately- or set an artificial timeline to do so. Again, I believe we are winning and the message coming back from the troops there is the same. Compare Iraq now to how it was over a year ago and yu'll see a vast improvement. The terrorists cannot face US forces- every time they have attempted this they have been defeated soundly. They cannot take and hold any ground for the same reason. The terrorist campaign they are currently waging is their only option. Yet here again they are slowly losing. For one, they cannot hope to compete technologically with the US- and we're hearing more and more about new anti-IED tech being introduced or developed. That's on one front- on another the US is policing the state very effectively and is being backed up by more and more trained Iraqi police and Army. They are also facing more and more dissent from the Iraqi people who are bearing the brunt of the terrorist campaign. And that's a key point to remember- the terrorists have no popular support. So what do they hope to accomplish? Can they take over Iraq? I don't believe so- at best all they can hope to accomplish is to create a massive civil war. The majority Shia population is opposed to the terrorists. Their aim is simple- to drive America out. To show the world that terrorist tactics work. To pull troops out (for whatever domestic, political, moral reasons one may hold) would show the terrorists one thing and one thing only- that America will not stand and face terrorism. That it will bow down to it eventually, if the bombs and deaths keep coming long enough. That message is surely one no American wants because it will only serve to invite further attacks by terrorists on the United States.

It's for exactly the same reasons that most nations refuse to negotiate with terrorists. If they get their way because of their tactics, they will continue to use those tactics to attain their aims. This seems obvious to me and to most conservatives who support the war- exiting Iraq signals a defeat at the hands of terrorists and it will only embolden them to further terrorist activity.

I think the main problem on the Left is that they see the continuing conflict as simply "wrong" because of their perceived view of the the way we went to war. We can argue for decades about that but it will not change where we are here and now- and we need to discuss, not the rightness or wrongness of the war, but what it actually means for us to either fight to victory or accept defeat at the hands of terrorists who think nothing of beheading hostages or randomly murdering children.

As I see it, we have made incredible progress in Iraq. The question now is do we throw it all away and give in to terrorism, or do we continue until Iraq is a stable, self-sufficient state. Those are the options. I honestly cannot understand how anyone would choose the former over the latter.

[harmon]

Robert said: "Unforutnately for our soldiers in peril, the Iraqi insurgents probably have their version of Decatur, too.
Iraq, right, or wrong."

The "insurgents" have no concept that their cause might be wrong. And their cause is not Iraq, but Islam.

There is no "patriotism" in their worldview.

"Thoreau recognized that the limits placed on us by our own consciences are far more profound than the demands placed on us by our governments. This is the sentiment of our founding fathers as well."

That's true as far as it goes, but it misses the point. The demands that are placed on us, over and against any personal conscience, are the demands of our country, not of our government.

Decatur did not say "my government, right or wrong." But he understood that at any particular point, the country is being represented by the government, and that when it comes down to the fighting, you fight FOR your country, whatever government you have.

That's what the song is about.

Shout out to AST: well said! Not merely right, but well written!

[Dan Kervick]

Jay Mac,

I disagree with much of the overall picture you paint of the current situation in Iraq.

Certainly, some regions have gotten better. At one time, there was a broader Iraqi insurgency, which included activity in the South by Sadr's Shiite militia. Following the assault on Sadr's forces in Najaf, and the negotiations with Sistani, the south has been relatively free of insurgent attacks, and the conservative region around Najaf and Karbala seems to be relatively calm.

In Basra, there seem to be some very serious problems, but they are not so much problems with insurgents, but different problems related to rampant corruption, crime and murderous gangland activity, as well as attacks by conservative Shiite religious vigilantes against the traditionally tolerant and more liberal Basra residents.

Where either Kurds or Arab Shiites have both clear majorities and full control of local governments, things are relatively calm, and the population is behind the movement toward a New Iraq, where their own political power and fortunes are bound to improve - one way or another, whether or not Iraq remains a unified country. But in places where there is no clear demographic edge, and there is ethnic or sectarian strife over control of a city, there is violence. And in places where Sunni Arabs have full control of a city or region, there is also much violence directed against the new national government, and the US troops who are there to support it. Most of the Sunni Arabs, of whatever political orientation, don't seem to want to live under that government.

So there has been much violence in Tal Afar, Kirkuk and Mosul, where Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen are in a struggle for control - or perhaps more accurately, Arabs and Turkmen are resisting Kurdish attempts to consolidate their control over the entire north.

And obviously, the worst of the violence has been occurring in Baghdad itself, and much of the Arab Sunni center of Iraq. The last I read, that region has seen a bit over 80% of the violence since the conclusion of the initial invasion. And I believe the percentage is higher in more recent times. In that region, I don't think we can say at all that things have been getting better. My sense is that the US forces are in a futile battle to establish control of the central government over a region that on the whole does not wish to be ruled by that government.

There were news reports a month or two ago of an internal poll conducted by the US occupation authorities that showed the majority of Iraqis were opposed to the occupation, and about 45% supported the insurgency - i.e., the use of violence against occupation forces. This widespread public support is limiting the ability of US forces to get reliable intelligence on who their attackers are, and how to locate them. And it leaves them vulnerable to being "set up" for ambush by informants working with insurgents.

The fact that the insurgents cannot attack US forces in conventional battles, or take and hold ground, does not strike me as a very important consideration. Taking ground is not the aim of the insurgents, and the conflict is not a conventional war against US forces. The insurgents are engaged in asymmetric guerilla warfare. The point of these attacks in virtually every case seems to be to prevent Coalition forces, and the agencies of new Iraqi government, from establishing effective control over the regions in which the resistance is concentrated.

The technological edge also strikes me as having a low order of significance in an asymmetric battle such as this one. The use of suicide bombing is a very effective tactic, and technology can do little to thwart it. And the insurgents appear to have responded to improved armor on US vehicles by developing a new kind of armor-piercing IED. Now, US armor may improve again somewhat in response. But the bottom line, it seems to me, is that US forces cannot do their job by staying locked inside armored vehicles. They have to come outside to quell disturbances, respond to attacks on civilian infrastructure, etc. And when they do they will be vulnerable, especially in a region where the majority of the population does not want you there, and there is widespread popular support for insurgent activity.

I think it is unhelpful in thinking about these problems to lay too much stress on the "war on terrorism". This is classic guerilla warfare, though it includes the use of methods such as suicide bombing that were pioneered by terrorists. It is very unclear to me how many of these attacks are the work of foreign jihadists or other Islamic revivalists, and how much is the work of other domestic Iraqi groups. It does seem clear that there are a lot of different groups participating, and they all have many different agendas.

As a measure of the complexity of the situation in Iraq, consider that there was a large demonstration in Baghdad today by supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr against regional autonomy or "federalism". Other important Shiite leaders, in the South, are in favor of fedaralism. It would surely be a mistake to think Sadr is motivated by a selfless concern for national unity and democracy for their own sake. The issue is that Sadr's supporters and power base are in Baghdad; greater regional autonomy would result in his Shiite supporters being subjected to Sunni rule. He know doubt prefers an arrangement in which a unified Iraq, dominated by Shiite power, lords it over the moinority Sunni population.

US forces have already been asked to do too much in Iraq. The problems there are deep and historical, and a resolution lies beyond the reach of a US-imposed solution. The US lacks the ability to secure the most violent areas, and our soldiers are, despite their well-meaning efforts, actually one of the main sources of that violence, both in their role as targets and as responders. Worse than the presence of the armed forces is the presence, near or remote, of the armies of constitution-writers, political advisors, pundits, academics and others involved in a self-indulgent US fantasy of recreating US history in foreign lands, down to the level of "Constitutional Congresses" and intitutionalized US conceptions of democracy and good government.

Increasingly, the US is in the middle of a battle where it doesn't belong. It's time to pull our forces back from the main centers of conflict, and bring some home. Those remaining in Iraq should be used only to deter further intervention by outside powers, and to respond to major assaults and outbreaks of more conventional military violence. But Iraqi are going to have to work out their political future among themselves, without the presence of the artifical and incongruous presence, and historical bottleneck, of the US "Iraq project" gumming things up.

[Dan Kervick]

The "insurgents" have no concept that their cause might be wrong. And their cause is not Iraq, but Islam.

I agree that for most of the insurgents the cause is not Iraq, harmon. But neither for most of them is it Islam. There are dozens of insurgent groups active in resisting the current government and US occupation, and in fighting those powers or each other. A few are Iraqi nationalist groups, more are domestic or foreign Islamist groups of various kinds, but most appear to be Baathists and other previously favored Sunni Arabs struggling to re-establish power they possessed under Saddam, or to prevent even more of that power from being lost. Some are simply clans and gangs who hope to establish control by their own associates over contested local turf.

I am worried by the tendency to view all these fights in Iraq as expressions of the grandest ideological and world-historical struggles - whether over "democracy" or "Islam" or "terrorism" or "the nation of Iraq". Of course there are ideologues in every battle, but these "big idea" categories strike me as typically more a reflection of American preoccupations than Iraqi ones. It seems more accurate to me to view the conflict as mainly one pitting smaller communities struggling to maximize their own power against one another.

[Adan]

The nay-sayers had predicted that Afghanistan was unwinnable (cue Vietnam analogies) but we won.

Look again.

The same 'quagmire' was applied to the invasion of Iraq- and yet again, we won.

Look again.

Again, I believe we are winning and the message coming back from the troops there is the same. Compare Iraq now to how it was over a year ago and yu'll see a vast improvement.

That's not what I see. Basic services still haven't improved much. Unemployment is still sky high. Most importantly, Iraqi political leadership is still deadlocked on how to form a government. The insurgency is still as strong as ever. Etc, etc.

The terrorists cannot face US forces- every time they have attempted this they have been defeated soundly.

They do a pretty good job of anonymously blowing our troops up.

They cannot take and hold any ground for the same reason.

In a guerilla war, I'm pretty sure they don't have to. The best way to kick us out is to get a consensus of Iraqis to turn against us. You don't need to win conventional battles to do that.

The terrorist campaign they are currently waging is their only option. Yet here again they are slowly losing. For one, they cannot hope to compete technologically with the US- and we're hearing more and more about new anti-IED tech being introduced or developed.

I'll believe in all the "gee whiz" technology when I see it. Till then, the insurgents appear to be pretty effective in blowing our soldiers up.

That's on one front- on another the US is policing the state very effectively and is being backed up by more and more trained Iraqi police and Army.

Got any figures? And again, I'll believe in an Iraqi security force when I see it in action.

They are also facing more and more dissent from the Iraqi people who are bearing the brunt of the terrorist campaign. And that's a key point to remember- the terrorists have no popular support.

That assumes there is only one group operating against the government in Iraq. You can't pin all the political assassinations, the sectarian violence, and the attacks against U.S. forces on Al-Zarqawi's group alone. Is it really a terrorist campaign, a guerilla war, a civil war, or a combination of all three? Besides, terrorism works through extortion, so the lack of popular support isn't a useful guage in measuring the effectiveness of a terror campaign.

The same people are now claiming that Iraq in untenable, that we should pull the troops out immediately- or set an artificial timeline to do so. Again, I believe we are winning and the message coming back from the troops there is the same.

Huh? Iraq has been untenable since the fall of Baghdad. But how would you define our success? From my point of view, Iraq's success or failure really doesn't depend so much on the presence of our military at this point. Have we been able to stop the car bombings? Have we been able to stop the kidnappings? Have we been able to stop the political assassinations? Have we been able to stop the sectarian violence? Have we EVER been able to influence the political process?

I think the main problem on the Left is that they see the continuing conflict as simply "wrong" because of their perceived view of the the way we went to war.

The left knows that our military can do very little at this point. The administration would seem to agree, considering how our main objective in Iraq is now one of training a native security force to take up the responsibility for continuing the fight, then getting the hell out.

Now, one has to ask, are those training efforts worth the additional sacrifice? Some would argue that its all just a face-saving trick that places the pride of our commander-in-chief over the lives of his soldiers, as in Nixon's "peace with honor" ploy. Others would argue that our presence is a reason for some of the violence and instability in Iraq. That a deadline for withdrawal will facilitate the political process, by making incumbent politicians appear genuine, and not mere lackeys of the United States.

In any case, the situation in Iraq is more than just a matter of us vs. the "terrorists". This ain't a game of football.

[Adan]

Decatur did not say "my government, right or wrong." But he understood that at any particular point, the country is being represented by the government, and that when it comes down to the fighting, you fight FOR your country, whatever government you have.

Is this guy actually proud of being a brownshirt?

[Jay.Mac]

"the US is in the middle of a battle where it doesn't belong. It's time to pull our forces back from the main centers of conflict, and bring some home. Those remaining in Iraq should be used only to deter further intervention by outside powers, and to respond to major assaults and outbreaks of more conventional military violence."

Dan, isn't that exactly the plan that Bush's administration has? The only difference is that Bush intends to keep troop level up until the Iraqi police and army are capable of taking control. The only difference here is that you'd rather we pull troops back now- at the expense of the Iraqi people who will be subjected to incredible violence in the power vacuum left behind.

[Adan]

^

All three major political blocks in Iraq have their own private armies. Really, can their even be a national Iraqi army that won't split if these private militias start shooting each other? Can you instill a sense of national service in a group whose individual members each identify with one of the three major political groups?

Is the administrations current strategy genuine, or are they just seeking a political out?

[Dan Kervick]

Jay,

I don't believe that either US forces or the "Iraqi" police and army will ever be capable of taking control of a populous region that refuses to be ruled by the current government. And I am greatly skeptical of the frequent assertions that the holdup there is simply the length of time it takes to "train" these forces. The problem is apparently finding enough people who are really committed to this fool's errand in the first place, have the latent capacity for carrying it out, and whose motivations for doing so are sound.

I think we need to let local leaders attempt take greater control of the situation there. The problem is that the people with the will to secure the region, and the prestige, local support networks and community authority to do so, are not the ones being armed and trained, either because they are opposed to both the central governnment and the US occupation, or cannot for political reasons work with US and government forces without suffering reprisals themselves. That's why we need to back off, and get out of there, so these people will be free to do establish control. Those who are being trained for that job now are people who for the most part do not have the capacity, or will, to do so.

Either this effort at outside control will be unsuccesful anyway, or it will simply be Saddamism in reverse. To subdue this recalcitrant region, outside parties will have engage in the most brutal kinds of techniques, implemented on a more-or-less permanent basis. What is the point? Just as Saddam had to employ arrest, torture, constant surveillance, military operations and other means of political oppression the secure areas in which he had no base of support, US and central government authorities will have to do the same thing in this region. It will be one Fallujah after another. In that case what's the point?

[Jay.Mac]

"It will be one Fallujah after another"

Dan, it seems to me that there are plenty of people willing to join the Iraqi Army and police- remember all those long lines of people waiting to join up despite the threat of frequent bomb attacks?

Your argument seems to be- we're training and arming the wrong people (i.e. the volunteers for the posts). Who do you propose we train and arm and how do you want to get them there? A draft? Who exactly are they?

There are plenty of Iraqis working for the police, Army, local government, utilities, etc. If we "back off" as you suggest do you really think that Iraq will stay peaceful and stable long enough for the unwilling-but-soon-to-be-willing Iraqis to step up to the plate and organise, train and arm themselves? Honestly? Can't you see that the security provided by American troops now is enabling the country to push forward? Go and read Chrenkoff's good news from Iraq (including the past issues) and see what's going on there besides the bombs. The situation is not as bleak as you paint it.

You state that outside control will fail or will result in "reverse Saddamism". US forces do not engage in anything like the sorts of behaviour you suggest, now or in the future. Do you really think that American forces will carry out torture and political oppression?

Yes, it's a difficult task but it's is working right now. For one, Fallujah was last November. Since that time the terrorists have not been able to take ground like that. Also, the Sunnis are beginning to get involved in the political process- they saw their mistake when they boycotted elections last time and effectively lost their power. It looks like they will take part in the next round of post-constitution elections. So i don't believe that we're looking at "a populous region that refuses to be ruled by the current government". The Sunni terrorists are a minority of a minority. The Sunnis have been given government posts- in the next round of elections they will no doubt vote for more of their own leaders. If some form of federalist government is established are the Sunni terrorists going to continue to wage their terrorist campaign against elected Sunni officials?

As for your assertion that local leaders need to get involved- long before the national elections, there were local elections with locals taking charge of their government- and running their day to day lives. The key to success in Iraq is simply the country getting on with it. Every day it moves forward is another success and a nail in the coffin of the "insurgency".

I really don't understand your point of view- you do not want American troops there. The result of that will be an increase in terrorism and a destabilising effect on the new Iraqi government. The removal of troops providing security will do nothing except cause more deaths and most likely the collapse of a new democracy. A victory for the terrorists. Is that what you want?

The alternative you see is that the Iraqi government will have its police and army and will effectively become another Saddamite entity, crushing dissent with a brutal fist. I don't argree. Remember, they are now elected officials answerable to the population at large. Voters have a profound influence on the actions of politicians. They want to get elected come next election.

I know that nothing I can say will change your mind because your view of Iraq is- disaster if we keep the troops and disaster if we pull out.

[Christine Golden]

I did not support the invasion of Iraq because of the threat of Saddam's possessing WMD, mainly because I knew better. I did not support the invasion because of possible terrorist links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq, even though I believed -- and still believe -- that such links existed. I did not support the invasion of Iraq because of oil, the environmental disaster in the marshes, or democracy. I supported the invasion of Iraq because of its state-sponsored gang-rape of small children in front of their families in order to extract confessions.
America stood by when Hitler rounded up the Jews of Europe and shipped them off to the camps. Roosevelt wouldn't even bomb the gas chambers and crematoria, instead saying that the best way to save the Jews was to win the war... except, of course, for the 6 million that were exterminated while Franklin played politics.

I was appalled at Clinton's inaction in Rwanda; only the outrage of the American people forced him to act. Well, I'm tired of this crap. I'm tired of my country saying that it stands for something, while doing nothing but business-as-usual at the UN. Not on my watch, not anymore. And if acting against such butchers also wipes out that viper's nest of Islamic fascism in the Middle East, all the better.

And, before anyone asks, no, I have not served in the armed forces, although I would do so gladly. I'm a disabled little person, whose spine is disintegrating, so I'm ineligible to serve.

[Dan Kervick]

Jay,

You say:

I really don't understand your point of view - you do not want American troops there. The result of that will be an increase in terrorism and a destabilizing effect on the new Iraqi government. The removal of troops providing security will do nothing except cause more deaths and most likely the collapse of a new democracy. A victory for the terrorists. Is that what you want?

First, I’m afraid I just don’t see what is happening in Iraq as fundamentally a conflict between “the terrorists” and a new democracy. Terrorism is only one small part of the equation. The conflict is a multi-sided one in which various different parties are struggling for power, and in which these parties support aspects of the political process they see as working in their favor, and reject those aspects of the process that work against their interests.

The likelihood that the collapse of the current phase of political process will lead to rule by “terrorists” anywhere in Iraq seems remote to me at this point. The militant jihadists don’t seem to have a strong power base anywhere in the country, by comparison with more traditional authorities. But I do believe that the best way to further radicalize the Sunni Arab public, and drive them to embrace the most uncompromising, reactionary and violent Salafist and jihadists creeds, is to continue to attempt to force the ongoing, US-sponsored government project down their throats. These people want to manage their own affairs, and to the extent they see US actions as part of an effort to establish US political and cultural domination over Muslims and Arabs, to the same extent they will be drawn to the jihadists who have been telling them precisely that, for years.

And the longer the US stays in Iraq, the longer Iraq will serve as a place for jihadists to swarm for the fight, talk to each other, train each other, develop networks and personal alliances, deepen their commitment, and coordinate plans for operations beyond Iraq.

Let me reiterate my position on American troops in Iraq. My comments about Iraq here at Democracy Arsenal are scattered over the comments sections of several different posts, so I don’t blame you for having difficulty in keeping track of what my views are. But I described the role I see for American troops here. I haven’t advocated simply getting our troops out of Iraq now, but withdrawing a substantial number and redeploying the others.

As I have indicated earlier, I do tend to be very pessimistic about where all this is headed, not just in Iraq but beyond. But rather than simply give in to my pessimism, what I have tried to do is propose an approach which might have some chance of success in preventing the further spread of conflict, and in preventing my pessimistic scenarios from becoming reality. My main concern in these comments has been to suggest a general approach to bringing the Iraq adventure, which I do think was a grave mistake, to a conclusion in a manner most likely to bring stability to Iraq, and thus least likely to spread conflict and instability further into the other states in that region. I also believe this is the path most likely to minimize the loss of life going forward. As I suggested earlier, I am not convinced the best approach at this time is to continue the effort to establish a strong central government in Iraq, and then to use force to establish effective control for that government over the Sunni Arab regions of Iraq.

As I see it, the issue is not one of defeating a relatively small handful of “terrorists”. The problem is that a very substantial proportion of Sunni Arabs, probably a majority, have no intention of ever submitting to any government likely to emerge from the current political process. The people engaged in fighting, to the best I am able to get a sense of it, are a mix of homegrown and foreign Islamists, Baathists, nationalists, conservative religious and tribal leaders and just lots of ordinary Sunnis who share the common aim of both repelling the US occupation, and preventing their political domination by the Kurds to the north and Shiites to the south (and by extension, Iran). As you mention, the Sunni population did not participate in the elections that initiated the current political phase. There have been belated efforts by some Sunni representatives to get involved in the constitution-writing process, but I do not believe these representatives really speak for their community or, more importantly, have the power to deliver that community to a unified Iraq.

You say:

Your argument seems to be- we're training and arming the wrong people (i.e. the volunteers for the posts). Who do you propose we train and arm and how do you want to get them there? A draft? Who exactly are they?

My point is that, in the Sunni Arab regions I have been discussing, we shouldn’t be training and arming anybody. The people who live there will do what they have to establish some sort of order. What we need to do is get out of there, and let them get on with it. In recent month we have seen the growth of Shiite-Sunni conflict in Iraq. The central government is dominated by Shiites, and the forces they are recruiting are mainly Shiites. What you see as “government” forces, Sunnis see as forces determined to subjugate them to Shiite power.

Stability is being achieved in Iraq where local leaders are relying on local forces to take charge of their own local communities. It’s not a pretty process, but that’s what’s happening. In the north of Iraq, there are hardly any US troops at all, and the US has given the Kurds a free hand to secure the region. In the south, cities and towns are secured by local militias that are nominally part of the national government, but whose real power has local roots.

There are militias at work in these areas using harsh measures to consolidate control. Do I like that? No. But this is what happens when you break a state! Order must be re-established. The alternative is the attempt to establish order through the use of forces coming from the outside; but this can never succeed in the long run where the outside forces do not possess overwhelming power and number - or at least the same level of popular support as local forces. It requires the permanent maintenance of martial law – official or de facto. And it is just a stopgap in any case, that will last only so long as that overwhelming force is in place.

You say:

Can't you see that the security provided by American troops now is enabling the country to push forward?

I do not see that – at least not in those areas where most of the conflict is taking place. I do believe that in some cases US power has helped to stabilize the country, as was the case in the assault on Najaf. And in some parts of the country, where there is already effective local control, that control is augmented by US forces. But in other parts of the country, US forces are not contributing to security, but undermining it. The rate of insurgents attacks, loss of life of police and other security forces, and civilian casualties due to acts of war have all been trending upward in 2005.

In those parts of the country where there is majority opposition to the US presence and to the rule of the US backed government, the presence of US forces only makes that particular region a battlefield. The main threat to security is that people are caught in the crossfire between US forces and those that are resisting them. The best way to help the people there is to remove the war from their back yards. There will, I accept, be a struggle for power when US forces withdraw. But that struggle is already taking place, and will happen one way or the other, since it is beyond the capacity of US forces to establish control over these areas. What is likely to happen following a gradual US withdrawl is that local militias, under the command of local sheikhs, will establish some sort of control. Perhaps, as in the south, these militias may eventually be folded into some sort of national force, at least nominally.

As these events take place, the most important strategic aim should be to contain the conflict that occurs in the Sunni region within that region, and to prevent it from catalyzing further violence and radicalization beyond that region, and beyond Iraq.

Your view, Jay, seems to be that the US forces are the line between security and chaos in Iraq. I don’t believe that is an accurate view of the Sunni Arab region in which US forces are most active. Rather we have a situation in which guerilla rebels, supported materially or morally by a majority of people in that region, are resisting the efforts of an outside power to establish control. The suicide bombings and IED explosions will mostly cease once that outside force is gone – and that includes the “government” forces trained by the Americans.

You say:

As for your assertion that local leaders need to get involved- long before the national elections, there were local elections with locals taking charge of their government- and running their day to day lives. The key to success in Iraq is simply the country getting on with it. Every day it moves forward is another success and a nail in the coffin of the "insurgency".

I agree with this. But we are actually preventing locals from getting on with it, because we are committed to establishing a government that rules from Baghdad, where the US and US-allied Shiites and Kurds provide the power behind the throne.

I understand that for partisan reasons many people are intensely interested in whether in the end we “win” the Iraq War or “lose” it. Right now, that is not the question that chiefly interests me. In the end, there are going to be some aims that were achieved and some that were not, some things that are better, some that are not.

[Tom O'Bedlam]

Why should I take any of the chumps writing this swill seriously, when the great majority of them don't have the balls to back up their hawkishness.

Okay, so don't. Go find a site where the supporters actually served; they're out there. That way you can actually engage the merits of the pro- and anti- war arguments, instead of avoiding them with a transparent ad-hominem the way you repeatedly do on this site.

As a side benefit, you can then avoid contorted constructions with dubious multiple negatives like, "I find it absolutely hilarious that the only argument any of the other members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders here can muster against Adesnik's not being a Chickenhawk is that they find the label "childish."

[owlbear1]

No one is questioning the "Nobility" of the Troops serving America. Why do Bush Apologist KEEP insisting that Case?

Perhaps because they do KNOW that Lies, Fearmongering, and Profiteering are NOT "Noble Causes"?

So please STOP equating George Bush's JUSTIFICATIONS for Invading Iraq to the NOBLE SERVICE of America's military?

Its Disgusting and TRULY belittles the sacrifices Made by Hundreds of Thousands of Americans.

[Cutler]

"No one is questioning the "Nobility" of the Troops serving America. Why do Bush Apologist KEEP insisting that Case?"

Because last time they got spit on?

[Richard Aubrey]

Cutler. During GW1, when the yellow ribbons were going up and so forth, it took about six seconds for those doing it to admit that it was a method of getting ahead of the hippies so they can't do what they did last time.
That stuff isn't going away.
And, no, I didn't get spit on. I wasn't in a wheelchair.
But those at a safe distance in 1969-1971....
That isn't going away.

[Dainis Michel]

I wrote this song in deep meditation and prayer about the war and the fallen soldiers and civilians on both sides.

Here are the lyrics:

Soldier
Words and Music: Dainis W. Michel

I had to, I had to go
they told me, they told me so
but only for a while
just for a while
to fight for
what they said was right
I
I had to go
go robbing souls

but what I died for
what I died for
what I died for
is to find another way

I lay my, my weapons down
my guilt is, my guilt is gone
the pain I've caused
the blood I've shed
is not squandered
and I
I know the way
'cuz I've, I've passed away
I've come to say

that what I died for
what I died for
what I died for
is to find another way

Dear Soldier, dear loyal soul
You have a, a right to know
You can choose to refuse
and not to win or lose
and all sides, across enemy lines
can trust their guiding light
and claim true power
the love that's in our souls

'cuz what I died for
what I died for
what I died for
is to find another way

------------------------------------
Copyright Dainis W. Michel 2003
------------------------------------

The character(s) speaking in the song are fallen soldiers in the current terror-driven wars. Soldiers from both sides. During the piano solo, the song moves into a Latvian folk melody, which basically, as gracefully as I can...says goodbye to those who've fallen.

If you feel moved to listen to the song, it's available here: http://www.sonicbids.com/Dainis (click on audio, then on Soldier).

Note: The recording is as raw as things get. It's just me at the piano with a MiniDisk recorder -- nowhere near the production quality of Luke Stricklin's song. There's some clipping on the recording, as I couldn't find a mic placement that would prevent that (where my voice would still be heard), and the MiniDisk recorder didn't have an anti-clipping feature. Also, the MP3 file chirps a bit due to the compression. I just decided to get the song out there regardless of the production quality.
------------------------------------

I might change the title of the song to "Another Way," as it might be helpful to come together and seek another way, a new alternative...something besides "pro-war" or "anti-war."

What could "another way" be? Would it be "pro-peace?" or "conflict resolution?" Is it possible that with heartfelt and sincere cooperation, a more effective alternative could crystalize that would allow both "sides" of the debate (and of the conflict) to set differences aside and work together for mutual benefit?

Sincerely,
Dainis W. Michel

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