HNN Poll: Are We at a Turning Point in Iraq?
PollsDo we have to wait another day before some official completes this picture by using the phrase "the light at the end of the tunnel"? Here's the sort of statement that's already coming out of the mouth of the Coalition Provisional Authoritys L. Paul Bremer:
'There is no question we have control over the country. I know if you just report on those few places [where the fighting is taking place], it does look chaotic,' Bremer said on CNN's American Morning. 'But if you travel around the country, what you find is a bustling economy, people opening businesses right and left, unemployment has dropped The story of the house that doesn't burn down is not much of a story in the news. The story of the house that does burn down is news.
So is Iraq -- yes, we're talking about Iraq, not Vietnam -- a glass half full or half empty? Or could it be half-shattered or is it a glass at all?
Soon enough we'll undoubtedly hear plaintive murmurings from official Washington that "they" -- the Sunni insurgents in that famed "triangle" (reminiscent of "triangles" first named decades ago); and the followers of the young Islamist extremist Muqtada al Sadr -- have been militarily "defeated" and should recognize as much and act accordingly. As if that were the point. As if the story were really a military one in the first place.
For anyone of a certain age, memories -- particularly of the shocking beginning moment of the surprise 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam -- are bound to come flooding back; not, I hasten to add, because that massive nationwide series of assaults which stunned the American public into disbelief and this chaotic spread of rebellion into the Shiite areas of Iraq are in any literal way similar, but because the response is familiar, because the "gap" between events unfolding on television and the Iraq promised by this administration is already large enough to create genuine unease in the "homeland," to give the alternately sunny and belligerent pronouncements of this administrations spokesmen in Baghdad and Washington the look of propaganda, not to say surreality.
In the Vietnam years, at least, our government had a series of military regimes,
however shaky, to back in South Vietnam (even if we had largely put them in
place). Iraq, on the other hand, is like a strange administrative void at the
moment. Under other circumstances, an American administration would simply have
backed a military strongman or junta of some sort. But this is now inconceivable.
With every other announced explanation for the invasion of Iraq from weapons
of mass destruction to al-Qaeda links down the tubes, this administration has
nothing left but the idea that its bringing "democracy" to the
country. Lose that and what is there except dreams, greed, and disaster.
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bryan haught - 4/13/2004
Although I agree with much of your post - the U.S. must be seen to "plays nice with others" in order to fulfill its foreign policy objectives without generating a coalition of the mistrustful - supersonic fighters with GBUs do confer political as well as military clout. Our current administration is running into the limits of military power, particularly if it is being run on the cheap. I suspect that if the original multi-hundred thousand man estimate for occupying Iraq had been taken seriously, we would not have seen quite the dissolution of Iraqi civil society that did occur - not least because the US army could not have supplied that number by itself for long, and we would have been forced to integrate UN troops and planning into our structure, with resultant gains in legitimacy and foreign aid. Of course, this would have required a completely different administration with completely different objectives...
Michael Meo - 4/11/2004
Let me if I may take the fact of the U.S. defeat in Iraq a few steps forward. Now that it is clear that the U.S. is not able just to walk into Iraq and change the regime wfter our own image, and the so-called "hegemon"--read single Imperial Power--is that only in its own mind, the whole business of the Indispensible Superpower needs to be thrown out.
The clearest way forward is to reject the unreal deception, that having supersonic fighters with laser-guided bombs allows you political power. Rather let the United States learn, after the debacle of Iraq, to implement George W. Bush's campaign promises of the year 2000, to approach international problems with humble expectations and with a willingness to work with others.
mark safranski - 4/10/2004
The Tet analogy is interesting. The Tet offensive militarily destroyed the NLF even as it produced politically disatrous televised images and commentary by Walter Cronkite. Thereafter, it was up to North Vietnam to replace the once thriving Southern guerilla movement with northern bodies.
The Sadrists ( who are anti-Iranian and xenophobic Islamists) have to either radicalize the Shiite majority that dislikes and distrusts them, come to a truce with the CPA or be chewed to pieces.
William S. Monroe - 4/7/2004
Paul Bremer says that "if you travel around the country, what you find is a bustling economy, [etc.]" But when Paul Bremer travels around the country he does so surrounded by heavily armed "civilian contractors". We will have reached a turning point in Iraq when Bremer can travel without those guards, and when George W. Bush can fly into Iraq in broad daylight, with advance warning, and can stay for more than 30 minutes. Otherwise, things have not changed since a year ago.
William S. Monroe - 4/7/2004
Paul Bremer says that "if you travel around the country, what you find is a bustling economy, [etc.]" But when Paul Bremer travels around the country he does so surrounded by heavily armed "civilian contractors". We will have reached a turning point in Iraq when Bremer can travel without those guards, and when George W. Bush can fly into Iraq in broad daylight, with advance warning, and can stay for more than 30 minutes. Otherwise, things have not changed since a year ago.
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