Tough stuff from Gary Hart:
"Our army is in danger," he said. "If all-out civil war breaks out, we could lose our army. If Sunnis and Shiites take to the streets by the thousands, it could literally be impossible to get [the soldiers] out. ... I know that sounds apocalyptic, but it’s not out of the question. We need an exit strategy. We have no choice. We’re making things worse. Ninety percent of the insurgents are Iraqis who don’t like the fact that we have occupied their country. ...
"I know we can’t just pack up and leave right away, but we’re still acting as if we hold all the cards over there. We don’t. We’re losing control of the situation. ... The British occupied Iraq for 35 years and finally had to leave because there was a constant insurgency against them. We haven’t learned anything." [1]
What is the answer, folks? Yes, we have a lying, cheating, incompetent president and administration who have created one of the worst foreign policy blunders in US history, have no answers of their own, and, frankly, don’t have the brainpower to do anything further. They’ve emboldened America-haters, destroyed US legitimacy, dismantled civil rights protections, made American democracy less democratic and less transparent and the administration itself less accountable and vastly more corrupt. And they continue to fail over and over, lie over and over, and continue spewing increasingly alarming platitudes in place of doing any kind of decent policy at all. Generations will face the negative consequences of this presidency’s actions. This president ought to be impeached, and there have never been more solid legal and moral grounds for impeachment of a US president.
All that said... what to do about Iraq? It’s true. The US made the mess - some 70% or so of Americans share the blame with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. Somehow, control over this mess has to be taken from their hands and placed in the hands of competent and decent people. But then what? Withdraw quickly or slowly? Stick around and rebuild while US presence in Iraq exacerbates the conflict?
We’ve had this problem for years now. But nobody has thought their way out of this tiny unpainted corner over the last three years. I’ll go out on a limb and offer up a few considerations for discussion.
1 Impeach the president. Yes, he’s incompetent and the administration corrupt, however institutionalized the corruption. There are good grounds for impeachment. But, more importantly, impeachment would be a first step towards showing the rest of the world some goodwill on the part of the American public. It would say that we’re going to start cleaning up the US-created mess by booting out the architects of that mess.
2 Once this administration is gone, the US should apologize sincerely for Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It will have to do so some day since the administration no longer "writes reality" to its liking. Better to do it sooner rather than later so that the US does not become known as a "torture state." This will not happen while this administration is in office. If it continues with the next president, he/she should be impeached too. We are not a torturing nation. We ought to set standards and ideals of decency that other countries can look to. That has been obliterated by this administration.
3 Get down to real negotiations with all sides in the conflict in Iraq as well as with Hamas. In Iraq, the US ought to recognize the concerns of the insurgents. Choosing sides, installing puppets, and creating a government that can’t exit the Green Zone are all practical policies and symbols of an oppressive occupier. Rumsfeld, I believe it was, said before the war that the US would have to side with some "unsavory characters." In practice this has meant siding with petit despots. Why not turn the tables and hammer out agreements with the insurgents against whom the US is fighting? This seems to me the only way out. I know there have been rumours of some negotiations with insurgents, but these don’t seem to have been terribly successful.
"Terrorists" is a catch-all term favored by the administration to refer to an imaginary, unitary group. Terrorism is, however, a tactic, not a political platform nor a political group. It is historically a tactic of the powerless and stateless. The most radical and nutty of fundamentalists - those who believe in the eventual overthrow of the West - can be marginalized by treating the concerns of Iraqi insurgents as real concerns. That element of terrorism can be stemmed through recognition. Their concerns are not merely based in a radical Islamist fundamentalist worldview. The US is an occupying power shaping the future of a state under which Iraqis will ostensibly live. I’d be pissed too.
As for Sunnis and Shiites, both sides and internal factions have shown a willingness to work together and have shown restraint. The country could indeed collapse into civil war. But it’s simply not clear whether the US occupation hurries along impending civil war or constrains it.
4 Negotiate with the Kurds for an autonomous Kurdish state. This is a price Iraq and the US will have to pay. Part of the negotiations will have to be the condition of no further encroachment upon Turkish territory. Legitimizing a limited Kurdistan at this point will cut off further civil strife in the future as the Kurds are simply biding their time now that Saddam is gone. Part of the agreement will have to be based on shares in natural resources (oil). Oil for peace and legitimacy as a state.
5 Deal with Hamas. Israel/Palestine is one of the central issues, however symbolic, of Middle Eatern frustrations. Treat Palestinians like human beings. They’ve elected a government perhaps out of anger, but the anger is not unjustified. Provide the incentives that Europe, the UN, and Russia are now giving to Hamas. Let them know that the US will recognize a Palestinian state if it drops its rhetoric about Israel. Conversely, Israel is a state already, but an expansionist one. Part of these negotiations would have to demand a genuine end to Israeli expansion, as opposed to the typical smokescreens of pulling settlers out of one area while expanding into another. At some point the expansion cannot continue anyway. Now is the time to face this reality. This would be the basis of a reduction in hostilities. US facilitation would be another goodwill effort towards restoring faith in the US as a decent country with whom states can engage in honest negotiations.
6 There are many other entangled issues, such as the US reliance on petroleum. But one last thing for now: this war is lost. There was never a clear goal, and when there’s no clear goal a war cannot be won. But it can be lost by creating a bigger mess than when it started. The times have changed. Now you can even be William Buckley and say the war is lost. Before it was just us "America-haters." As a lost war, what’s the result? Likely a theocratic Iraq heavily influenced by Iran. This returns us to the civil war cycle, but with the support of Iran it’s one the Iraqi Sunni cannot win. I don’t see any way around the fact that Iran has played the war very smartly. Iran is the winner in this war. The only case in which it is not is if the US expands the war to include Iran. This would be suicide, but I wouldn’t put it past this administration. All the better reason to go back to #1.
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