The Rant Corner
Here we go again

Stew Shearer | contributing columnist
sshearer@smcvt.edu

General Petraeus’ and Ambassador Crocker’s testimony to Congress has come and passed, and for the most part it seems that little has changed in Washington. The vast majority of Democrats are still yelling retreat as vehemently as many Republicans used to be calling charge. In all likelihood, the military will have another six months to do its job in Iraq and then once again, the leaders of this conflict will all meet, puff out their chests like chicken hawks to look strong for the next election, and the cycle will begin all over again.

The key difference is that unlike previous years of the Iraq conflict, this meeting of the big shots was marked by actual progress, albeit limited. Security throughout the country has improved and while it was most obviously meant as a photo op, the fact that President Bush could actually safely go to the once strife-ridden Anbar province is something that should be considered with less than the usual grain of salt.

All of this said, the Iraqi people are still lagging behind in matters of political progress, and that fact overshadows whatever ground we make in matters of security. Because the reality of the world is that all the local reconciliation in the world will not mean a thing if the national government cannot pick up its pace. But then here’s the thing, should we really be asking them to?
          
I understand that our goal is to rebuild Iraq and leave it in a better state than it was when we left, but I cannot see that being a realistic possibility in terms of politics. Think about the American government. After 200-plus years many would claim that the United States still doesn’t have a good government, and we would do well to remember that our first attempt at a constitution, the Articles of Confederation failed.

So what should happen? Should we just stay in Iraq until they finally get it right? Of course not! We should stay until the job is done, but our job is not to dictate the political destiny of Iraq. We invaded to depose a dictator and we have done that. Our sole remaining goal should be to stabilize the security situation and then begin a gradual withdrawal.

Many saw Petraeus’ announcement that 30,000 soldiers could soon return home as a sort of token withdrawal to shut up the critics, but those people are wrong. Those 30,000 soldiers were sent there because they were needed desperately and now things have improved to the point that they aren’t necessary any more. As long as we maintain our current methods, things will likely keep improving as they are and eventually more withdrawals will happen.

All of this said, the fact that after all this time we are still there and this progress is only happening now is the true shame of the situation, and it can only be attributed to the gross mishandling of this war by the Bush administration. Through his fear- mongering and his dogmatic support of incompetent leaders, he has prolonged a war expensive both in lives and money.

The strategies that are working now have been suggested for years by various people within the government and military, and even when it was obvious that course the Bush administration was so fervently sticking to was not working, they all but refused to change. I truly believe that if the President had been smarter about this war, we could already have our soldiers home now. But he wasn’t; add it to the list of things he hasn’t been up to par on and let's just hope the next Commander in Chief is more intelligent.

This does little to solve the current situation, but as I have said, under the current strategy, I believe in time things will eventually become stable enough for the Iraqis to take over their security on a wider scale until we can withdraw fully. We owe them that much, because the truth is, we did start this war and whether or not you agree with it, it's our responsibility to make sure the Iraqis can handle themselves by the time we leave. It is not our responsibility to sit there and wait for them to squabble through petty political disagreements. We have bought them more than enough time for that already.

Many would support leaving right now and while that is tempting those people should remember history. Vietnam is a war that has been compared to Iraq more than once in the past few years, and at the end of that war we left. And while the activists and protesters who had worked so hard throughout that conflict were likely pleased at the time, few like to remember that the U.S. withdrawal and the resulting invasion by North Vietnam left more than two million South Vietnamese citizens dead. Vietnam is a war that America lost, but it was the Vietnamese who paid the highest price. Let’s not lose another war like that.