Reconsidering Iraq

Howard Fineman • E-mail

WASHINGTON - I’m sitting here with a gloomy letter from Iraq, written by a high-ranking officer I cannot name in a branch of service I cannot name in a part of the country I cannot name. But trust me, because I trust him. Iraqis, he says, have no feel for or belief in the democracy we want to create, and our occupation is making them less, not more, capable of self-government.

“Our eventual departure,” he worries, “will leave nothing but cosmetic structure here.” “Every mission,” he writes, “requires a conscious escape from the resignation that there is nothing here to win and every occasion to fail.”

Small miracles do happen – a child is saved, a generator is installed. There remain “possibilities.” But sullen eyes along the roadsides give this officer “the feeling that we have stayed too long but can not leave.”

You can dismiss this as understandable but misleading musings of an officer who has seen too many men killed, and who doesn’t see the “big picture.” But what exactly IS the big picture? That’s the dominant question as our next political cycle – the one that culminates in the 2008 election – begins.

Are we better off today ...
I’ve often said that George W. Bush’s decision to go to Iraq was one of the biggest and most consequential ever made by a president. Was it folly or shrewd foresight? Are we safer as a result, or more imperiled? Was the liberation of Iraq worth the death it caused, the money it cost and the hatred it engendered? What now? Wouldn’t leaving soon be worse than never having gone?

The outlines of this renewed political debate are beginning to emerge. Sen. Joseph Biden, the Democrats’ leading voice on foreign policy in the Senate, is going to give a speech soon that, he says, will set what amounts to a timetable for American disengagement. If we can’t meet the benchmarks in his timetable, then he will suggest that we get out.

You can dismiss Biden, if you want, as a guy who suddenly has decided that he wants to run for the Democratic nomination in ’08, and thus he has begun pandering to the anti-war crowd. But that’s just the point: the center of gravity on this issue is beginning to move. If Biden is willing to use the “W” word – withdrawal – other Democrats will feel free to question the war more openly and aggressively.

That looked too risky not long ago, when official Washington was reassured by -- even jubilant about -- the signs of incipient democracy sprouting as a result of our aggressive watering in the Middle East.

There was good news from everywhere: the West Bank, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and, especially, Iraq. The bravery of Iraqis was inspiring, the memory of purple ink indelible.

Then the suicide bombings began in earnest, as Islamist terrorists seek to turn the entire Muslim Crescent into a West Bank. And while Americans love democracy, they are dubious about global programs to extend its reach if the path isn’t clear and the locals aren’t willing.

We had noble goals in Vietnam, but achieving them was too costly and the Vietnamese didn’t share them.

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