A Pilgrim’s Digression

It has been a long time since I’ve written about the Iraq war because, honestly, there seems very little left to say. Most people have made up their minds. It is a war that has dragged on now for four years, and opinions have been formed, and myths have been created, spread, and believed.

What is there left to say? I listen to liberals and conservatives call in to talk radio, and all of them are talking from the same script written four years ago.

“Bush lied about WMD” … “If we don’t fight them over there, we’ll have to fight them over here”… “We didn’t send enough troops to do the job”…”The New York Times and its media acolytes are giving aid and comfort to the enemy”…”No blood for oil”…

On and on, round and round we go. Same old tired talking points. There is no solution. There is no exit.

Perhaps that is the biggest myth of all: that there can ever be a happy ending. The conclusion of the Iraq war will be fruit of the poison tree. Conservatives talk about the symbolic victory we will hand the terrorists if we pull out too soon. Yet we all know (don’t we?) that the terrorists will declare victory no matter when we pull out, or how. Today, tomorrow, next year, ten years. It makes no difference. In the eyes of the Middle East, America will have been “forced out” of Iraq by the brave mujaheddin.

Think for a moment of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. That occupation lasted from 1979 to 1989. Nine years, 15,000 Soviet soldiers dead. How many Muslim “terrorists” (we didn’t call them such, back then) do you think were killed during those nine years of occupation? Let’s just say, probably more than 15,000. Just as with the Iraq war, exact numbers, or even good estimates, are hard to come by.

Despite all the death and destruction, did the Soviets come off looking like victors? No doubt they portrayed themselves as such in their own propaganda. However, America does not have the benefit of a pro-government propaganda ministry; at least not officially. How much worse is our withdraw from Iraq going to look?

Back at the beginning of the war, I wrote at this blog that I sometimes felt like Winston Smith at the end of Orwell’s 1984, watching the news and waiting for word of victory. I no longer wait for, or expect victory. Oh, we may get word that we have won, but who will believe it?

And if no one can be made to believe it, how is it a victory?

All anyone wants now is an exit with honor, and even that may be impossible. Even moreso than in the Vietnam war, the media around the world has cast America as the occupying aggressor in Iraq, little different from the Soviet army that invaded Afghanistan in the late ’70’s. There can be no exit with honor for such an army.

Nevertheless, I have been a supporter of General Petraeus’ efforts to stem the violence that is ripping Iraq apart. I still am a supporter, not for reasons of national “honor,” but because I want to believe for the sake of the Iraqis that we can get it right this time. Just once, can’t we get it right? Can’t we stop the violence and put an end to this disaster, with the Iraqis taking some measure of security and control of their destiny unto themselves? I want to believe we can, but in my heart, I think it’s impossible.

Pessimism is nothing new to me. But my latest bout with pessimism is a result of reading the stories detailing the search for the three kidnapped soldiers in Iraq. I think the stories of our soldiers who are taken alive by the terrorists grip and terrify us so much because though we don’t speak of it, we know what horrors the butchers are perpetrating on the bodies of these boys.

Usually, when the bodies are discovered, the worst part is left to our imaginations, triggered by a simple phrase: “body showed signs of torture.” But that’s enough for me, anyway.

There is a part of me that can’t bear to think of it, yet can’t stop thinking of it. We think of these guys as brave, strong, well-trained Schwarzenneggar-like heroes who grit their teeth as they are being tortured, unwilling to utter a sound that might please their captors. Yet we know they are only human. What horror they must have lived through in their last moments!

And does anyone doubt that if they are not dead already, they probably will be soon enough? It’s the hopelessness that gets to me, the certainty that the bodies will turn up sooner or later, “showing signs of torture.” One soldier’s corpse has already been found.

In many ways, this feeling of hopelessness mirrors my feelings on Iraq. Part of me still believes we have to, literally, soldier on for the sake of the Iraqis. We have to make up for the damage we have done. But more often than not, the effort seems so futile.

Meanwhile, in an article buried deep in the Washington Post, New Strategy for War Stresses Iraqi Politics, we learn that even General Petraeus and other top officials are not counting on a military solution to the problems in Iraq. Among other proposals in the new plan are negotiated “cease fires” between warring factions in Iraq. As the Post author points out, shockingly, “Efforts at negotiated settlements brokered by U.S. and Iraqi officials will extend to a broad spectrum of Iraqi groups, including some that have killed U.S. troops — a source of consternation for some U.S. officers.”

The leaders of these factions, called “Iraqi nationalists” (rather than terrorists) in the report, are the ones the developers of this plan hope to bring into the Iraqi government as a way of “giving them a place at the table” and therefore stemming the violence. Meanwhile, the “Iraqi nationalists” continue to kill American soldiers.

Nine Americans were brutally killed yesterday; more than twice that number of Iraqis were butchered, echoing the stats on the war as a whole.

Is it still worth it?