The Bush administration may ratchet up the Iraq war.
That might seem unlikely, even farfetched. After all, the president
is facing an upsurge of domestic opposition to the war. Under such
circumstances, why would he escalate it?
A big ongoing factor is that George W. Bush and his top aides seem
to believe in red-white-and-blue violence with a fervor akin to
religiosity. For them, the Pentagon’s capacity to destroy is some kind
of sacrament. And even if more troops aren’t readily available for duty
in Iraq, huge supplies of aircraft and missiles are available to step up
the killing from the air.
Back in the USA, while the growth of antiwar sentiment is apparent,
much of the criticism -- especially what’s spotlighted in news media --
is based on distress that American casualties are continuing without any
semblance of victory. In effect, many commentators see the problem as a
grievous failure to kill enough of the bad guys in Iraq and sufficiently
intimidate the rest.
(Bypassing the euphemisms preferred by many liberal pundits, George
Will wrote in a Washington Post column on April 7, 2004, that “every
door American troops crash through, every civilian bystander shot --
there will be many -- will make matters worse, for a while.
Nevertheless, the first task of the occupation remains the first task of
government: to establish a monopoly on violence.”)
A lot of what sounds like opposition to the war is more like
opposition to losing the war. Consider how Philadelphia Inquirer
columnist Trudy Rubin concluded an Aug. 21 piece that disparaged Bush
and his war policies. The column included eloquent, heartrending words
from the mother of a Marine Corps Reserve member who died in Iraq early
this year. And yet, the last quote from her was: “Tell us what it is
going to take to win, Mr. Bush.” In a tag line, the columnist described
it as a question “we all need an answer to.”
But some questions are based on assumptions that should be
rejected -- and “What is it going to take to win?” is one of them. In
Iraq, the U.S. occupation force can’t “win.” More importantly, it has no
legitimate right to try.
While leveling harsh criticisms at the White House, many analysts
fault Bush for the absence of victory on the horizon. A plaintive theme
has become familiar: The president deceived us before the invasion and
has made a botch of the war since then, so leadership that will turn
this war around is now desperately needed and long overdue.
Some on Capitol Hill, like Democrat Joseph Biden and Republican
John McCain in the Senate, want more U.S. troops sent to Iraq. Others
have different messages. “We should start figuring out how we get out of
there,” Chuck Hagel said on Aug. 21. He lamented: “By any standard, when
you analyze two and a half years in Iraq ... we’re not winning.” But a
tactical departure motivated by alarm that “we’re not winning” is likely
to be very slow and very bloody.
In the Democratic Party’s weekly radio address over the weekend,
former senator Max Cleland said that “it’s time for a strategy to win in
Iraq or a strategy to get out.”
Cleland’s statement may have been focus-group tested, but it
amounts to another permutation of what Martin Luther King Jr. called
“the madness of militarism.” All the talk about the urgent need for a
strategy to win in Iraq amounts to approval for more U.S. leadership in
mass slaughter. And the United States government does not need a
“strategy” to get out of Iraq any more than a killer needs a strategy to
stop killing.
“It is time to stand back and look at where we are going,”
independent journalist I. F. Stone wrote. “And to take a good look at
ourselves. A first observation is that we can easily overestimate our
national conscience. A major part of the protest against the war springs
simply from the fact that we are losing it.” Those words appeared in
mid-February 1968. American combat troops remained in Vietnam for
another five years.
It matters why people are critical of the U.S. war effort in Iraq.
If the main objections stem from disappointment that American forces are
not winning, then the war makers in Washington retain the possibility of
creating the illusion that they may yet find ways to make the war right.
Criticism of the war because it isn’t being won leaves the door
open for the Bush administration to sell the claim that -- with enough
resolve and better military tactics -- the war can be vindicated. It’s
time to close that door.
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Norman Solomon is the author of the new book “War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For excerpts and
other information, go to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com