Iraq again?

I remember my editor at Auburn saying "Bosnia again?" when I wrote the second or third Bosnia opinion column in three or four weeks. It wasn't really on the front pages yet; we hadn't sent troops or bombed yet. I certainly hadn't had the experience of trying to make the world better (as opposed to just killing the bad guys/commies etc) and making an utter disaster of it yet.

I thought that we could use our strength to make a better world. I think we did in Bosnia. Somalia should have been a warning.

Anyway, I want to talk about Iraq again. Sorry, Seth, wherever you are.

What I want to say is, we / the left (can I count myself among "we"? I guess that's another topic...) are on the chariot... we are riding high politically on anger at Iraq. But I don't know that we know what we want. Or, I think we have a coalition of people with different values who are having a party of convenience but don't realize how potentially deep their disagreements are.

Or maybe I'm just hoping for company in my internal conflicts.

I've always been embarrassed by how much I supported the aims of the war. I mean, not just that I hoped it worked - given the lives at stake I certainly hope everyone wanted it to work. But for some reason (Bosnia?) I thought it could. I missed the same things that the administration did. Yeah I was skeptical of the rosy scenarios. Of course I have excuses: I'm not an expert, the media was fed a line, etc. But at the end of the day, I thought Iraq would be better off. I thought we would be despised, but I thought Iraq would be better. No death squads. No sanctions starving babies.

I was wrong.

And so I question myself now when I look at my fears for what comes next.

The surge is not working. The country wants its troops home. Liberals/the left want an end to a foreign policy premised on launching preemptive wars, and a debacle in Iraq suits that well. I do not mean to suggest that the left hopes the war goes still worse; I fully believe they think the war is lost, and negative signs are just taken as a hopeful sign that others will see this and stop the madness.

But.

And this is where my conflict is.

What happens next? The hopeful scenario is that, with the Americans going, both sides size each other up properly, make the appropriate political compromises to reflect that power (im)balance (fairness be damned) and the fighting actually goes down. In this view, our presence acts as a fuel to the fire, an itch that is scratched with suicide bombings. Maybe. We certainly embolden the Shiite majority to not make deals, as they know we won't stand by and let their government fall. Maybe they'll cut a deal without us.

But I doubt it. I fear that is the same "hope over experience" thinking that got us and the Iraqis into this. More likely I think, the Shiites know our time is limited; they are using our presence to consolidate as much power as possible so that on our exit they are well positioned to "finish the job" and wage a more full-on civil war with the Sunnis. I believe the police and military are branches of the Shiite militia, and will be used as such the moment we leave. I also think the only leverage we have is offering to leave or stay based on the behavior of the Shiite government, but the Republican good cop ('we will stand down when they stand up') and the Democratic bad cop ('we will stand down, then maybe they will stand up') leave no allowance for different actions on our part. Let me say that more clearly. I think the Iraqis figure we are gonna do what we are gonna do (whether leave or stay), so they are best served by maxing their power while we are there and then starting the real war when we leave.

Here is my moral dilemma. For all the political energy on the left about ending the war, I don't think it ends when we leave. I pray it does, but I doubt it. I think we just change the channel now our kids are home, we say any loss of life is the Iraqis' fault (we gave them a chance), and while we are pressing the Sudanese to stop the genocide there, and threatening to send troops, a genocide may happen in Iraq with no credible threat of outside intervention. I think Iran and Saudi Arabia may play out a war in Iraq, and the loss of life will be terrible.

Let's say I'm right (while hoping otherwise).

#1 Maybe we should get out anyway. If the endgame is a political settlement, and too much has happened to get a settlement until a real fight balances the anger with sorrow, then maybe we have to get out of the way and let the sorrow begin. Maybe. But that is nothing to celebrate or be proud of. It's a cold, cold calculation.

#2 Or maybe, we face a question of whether, having broken Iraq, we have a moral duty to police it, and to spend our blood to try to protect all the innocents there who will otherwise die. That assumes our presence, say with another 50k troops and a commitment of 5-10 years, can allow peace to be reached without genocide. I don't know, but it's possible. If so, how do we weigh the moral obligations of our nation to defend life we've put at risk by our policies, with what we owe to our soldiers?

I guess where I am right now is, I think the public says, in effect, screw Iraq if they can't take care of themselves, and we have a bunch of folks on the left who don't like war, and want to see a black mark against the preemptive war policy, and that creates a marriage of convenience. But when we start pulling out because in Republicans are afraid of voters in 2008, if - if - we see blood really flowing in the streets, I wonder...

I wonder if the military guys who see the situation on the ground, who see that with more troops we can maintain a low-grade civil war, and that the alternative is worse from a humanitarian situation ... I wonder if they have it easy. They just have to do the job we give them. We have to ask whether it is worth sacrificing American lives to save Iraqi ones. I think we will choose not to, and I think that will be a winning political decision. Maybe it's morally necessary - who am I to ask someone to die for another, to die for mistakes those soldiers did not make? But if I see the left celebrating a pullout while a civil war we facilitated spins out of control, I will feel a sickness in my stomach.

Let me be clear: I think we probably have to leave, as I am not sure our sacrifices are lessening the chance of an eventual massacre. And if we are viewed as an occupying force, it makes the world - especially the middle east - a more dangerous place (regardless of our good intentions). But the moral core of what makes me a liberal is ashamed and saddened by this failure of power to make things better. It doesn't believe it is possible the "end" the war any more than it is possible to "win" it. It sees a 2009 with Americans being as obnoxious about the Iraqis as they were about the French, while Iraqi kids are blown up. And it expects to be ashamed at the pride with which the left holds itself for having achieved this tragic and morally dubious "end."