George Bush told a captive audience today at the United States Naval Academy in Maryland that the United States will stay in Iraq untill victory is achieved. James Fallows writes that the current course is a failure and argues what must be done to achieve victory in Why Iraq Has No Army [ December 2005 The Atlantic Online ].
In sum, if the United States is serious about getting out of Iraq, it will need to re-consider its defense spending and operations rather than leaving them to a combination of inertia, Rumsfeld-led plans for “transformation,” and emergency stopgaps. It will need to spend money for interpreters. It will need to create large new training facilities for American troops, as happened within a few months of Pearl Harbor, and enroll talented people as trainees. It will need to make majors and colonels sit through language classes. It will need to broaden the Special Forces ethic to much more of the military, and make clear that longer tours will be the norm in Iraq. It will need to commit air, logistics, medical, and intelligence services to Iraq—and understand that this is a commitment for years, not a temporary measure. It will need to decide that there are weapons systems it does not require and commitments it cannot afford if it is to support the ones that are crucial. And it will need to make these decisions in a matter of months, not years—before it is too late.
If cheerleaders understand what staying the course entails, the unending occupation of Iraq and the propping up of any thug who agrees to it, then they support the colonisation of Iraq no matter how Fallows or others attempt to frame it.
I’ve spent some time this morning reading blogs by Iraqis who’ve done their best to support the so-called liberation of their country, at least two of whom recently fled the joy of it in fear of their lives, but the following exchange encapsulates the depth of the average American’s understanding of this conflict. Mama is a 34-year-old mother of three, a dentist living in Mosul, her father is a civil engineer living in Baghdad who studied engineering in the United States. She started blogging to relieve the loneliness that set-in after marrying and moving from Baghdad to Mosul only to be adopted by Americans who minimise the horrors she’s experiencing as a necessary evil and tell her victory is just down the road because the gov’t that Mama has said time and again she doesn’t trust says it is so.
To those who are still optimistic about Iraq future, I doubt that I agree with you I know you want to see the democracy in my free country, but you don’t see what I see I can’t be sure about the shiny future ahead, while I can see death, devastation, sadness in the children’s eyes, I saw the residues of beloved Baghdad, where is the beauty of our capital?, there are only destructed buildings, blocked streets, dirts everywhere. sadness in every eye, bad stories in Eed, deep sighs from every Iraqi, sicknesses without cure, moreover, so many new Sadaams in the Iraqi new government. Mama…………….
To which some compassionate woman from Salt Lake City, Utah replied:
“Do you know that even American went through these same struggles when they were becoming a free country.”
WTF? How do people like this get dressed in the morning, go to work, get through the day without a minder? They don’t. All hail to the pods!
24 Steps to Liberty, a blog kept by an Iraqi journalist who tries his best to remain optimistic about the occupation, is angered by the deBaathification taking place:
What is going on with removing the monuments in Iraq? They say it is part of Dibaathification process. This is our history. I don’t care if they symbolize agonies or Baath party or whatsoever. This is part of my life and history, why should I give it up? My life was not all happy, and will never be all happy. I need to remember that i suffered. i need to tell my children and grand children that we suffered. I cannot tell them without evidences. These monuments are the evidence for decades of struggle.
What did it mean when they took Abu Jafar Mansour’s monument from a circle in Baghdad? Now we have no Baath party in Baghdad? Abu Jafar Mansour built Baghdad for God’s sake. He built the city of Thousand Nights and a Night. He didn’t kill the Shiites or the Sunnis. He only fought with the Persians [Iranians] when they tried to invade Iraq. [So now you know why they removed it]
The reality is that even if Fallows’ blueprint was followed to a T, all America will ever allow Iraq is a new Saddam. The question isn’t should America stay the course but why should Iraqis tolerate it?