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Fighting in Basra reveals the unchanging reality of Iraq
So now there is major fighting again in Iraq, with the Shi’ite militias in the south challenging the government, and with the government forces unable to suppress the militias, and with possibly worse developments to follow. Unlike most critics of Bush’s Iraq policy, I predicted the success of the surge and acknowledged the success when it happened. Unlike most supporters of Bush’s Iraq policy, I always added that the surge did not change the long-term situation, in which Iraq would remain perpetually unstable and America would need to keep its forces there forever or face the collapse of the government. McCain says his “100 years in Iraq” comment was conditioned on the U.S. forces not being attacked, the way they’re not attacked in Europe and Japan. But this is a fantasy. As long as American soldiers and Marines are in that country, they will be attacked and killed, because there is no prospect of peace there. Therefore every time a Bush supporter announces or predicts “victory” in Iraq, he is LYING and he should be held to account for his LIE. I repeat what I have been saying for the last four and half years: there is no victory even theoretically in sight. What is in sight under the Bush policy and the McCain policy is the presence of American armed personnel in Iraq—fighting, dying, and being maimed—FOREVER. This is the world as Norman Podhoretz and his followers want it. This is their supreme, indeed their sole, political objective.
If that last comment sounds extreme, I again direct you to John Podhoretz’s cover article in the March Commentary, “The Election, the GOP—and Iraq,” in which staying in Iraq is treated as the ultimate concern of all concerns, the axis of good around which all other goods revolve. Email entry |