NEW YORK CITY -- Much as I hate to interrupt what is apparently
a deeply felt triumphalism on the American right, now that it's over, does
anyone see any reason for our having invaded Iraq?
I realize that's what we all kept trying to figure out before
the invasion, but don't you think it should at least be visible in
hindsight? Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a
quagmire.
These are early days, certainly, to attempt a full historical
evaluation. Could be a case of the forest and the trees. Perhaps we're well
along the road to having everything work out magnificently, and I'm just
missing it. Still, I can't see anything that's going right.
Iraq is in chaos, and apparently the only way we'll be able to
stop it will be to kill a lot of Iraqis. Just what Saddam used to do. The
other day, we announced we were going to shoot looters, and when that
produced nightmare scenarios of children dead for stealing bread, we had to
cancel that plan. Now we're going to try gun control -- that should have the
enthusiastic support of the NRA. Meanwhile, the chaos in Iraq seems to be
costing us whatever goodwill we earned for getting rid of Saddam Hussein,
the one unmitigated good to have come from all of this.
I hate to be picky, picky, picky, but there are still no weapons
of mass destruction. In fact, we've apparently even stopped looking for
them. Since Iraq never had anything to do with Al Qaeda or Sept. 11 --
despite American public opinion on this issue -- it was certainly no
surprise to see Al Qaeda back again, with strikes in both Saudi Arabia and
Morocco. Bush's announcement that we had broken up the organization seems to
have been a trifle premature. There was much un-muted griping from American
intelligence about the total Saudi failure to cooperate before the attack
there. (As one antiwar sign reminded us before the recent events, "Sept. 11
equals 15 Saudis, 0 Iraqis.")
Meanwhile, one of the other sales pitches we were given was
that, for reasons never explained, getting rid of Saddam Hussein would make
it easier to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It's not
looking promising. Didn't look promising before the war, doesn't now.
President Bush came out with his Roadmap for Peace, and the
Israelis took the first exit. Ariel Sharon, so memorably described by Bush
as "a man of peace," wasted no time undercutting that proposal. The
always-unhelpful Palestinian terrorists attacked, and Sharon
counter-attacked and then cancelled his trip here to discuss the peace plan.
The usual ugly pictures and refueled resentments ensued; the same-old,
same-old of this 50-year-old cycle. So far, getting rid of Saddam seems to
have had zero effect on this old deadlock.
Meanwhile, Iraq looks more and more as though it will be costing
us the high-end estimate of $20 billion a year, for which they have yet to
appear noticeably grateful. The Shiites hate us, the Kurds are killing the
Arabs, we're hiring old Ba'athite thugs to run things and generally becoming
about as popular over there as a whore trying to get into the SMU School of
Theology. As John Henry's cousin Eddie used to say of the Vietnamese, "If
they don't like what we're doin' for 'em, why don't they just go back where
they come from?"
OK, if this is the situation -- and it's certainly what's being
reported -- I don't get why we're still hearing Bushies saying, "Ha, ha, ha;
we won the war." Was there anyone who said we wouldn't?
Since I am in the happy position of having predicted a short,
easy war and the peace from hell, I think I'm looking like a genius
prognosticator about now. I can't figure out why the Republicans are happy
about this. Sure, it was a great photo-op for the president on the aircraft
carrier, but if you think the American people won't notice $20 billion a
year because of some nice pictures, you have sadly underestimated the common
sense of this nation. I realize that what we see depends on where we stand,
but there is a substantial body of emerging fact here, none of it
encouraging for optimists.
We may yet see hopeful developments, but damned if I can see any
cause for celebration now, or even for building a presidential re-election
campaign around footage of our triumphant pres flying out to the aircraft
carrier. There's a very real possibility that by November 2004, Republicans
will very much want everybody to forget the war now called Dubya Dubya II.
(Sorry, I don't know whom to credit for that one, but it's not original with
me.)
I've got an even-money bet out that says more Americans will be
killed in the peace than in the war and more Iraqis will be killed by
Americans in the peace than in the war. Not the first time I've had a bet
out that I hoped I'd lose.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
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