U. S. Out of Iraq, Now

With what principles or purposes should the U. S. now attempt to further influence the outcome of its invasion and occupation of Iraq? Incipient civil war erupting among Iraqis, primarily between sects representing the two major branches of Islam, has gradually assumed dimensions which overwhelm conventional circumstances. Using various frames of reference, a wide spectrum of proposals are being articulated, from immediate withdrawal to extended / expanded intervention, essentially similar to assorted views expressed for years.

Dissolution of Iraq and emergence of more realistic national entities, with cogent repercussions throughout the Mid-East, has always been the only reasonable (historically plausible) outcome, once the U. S. toppled Saddam Hussein. Why did U. S. political leadership utterly fail to comprehend such a key geo-political reality? This is presently the major question swirling and shunned, within the national political atmosphere.

Upon what percept and strategy would the U. S. now presume to shepherd events, the very maelstrom of its own making, toward some form of best scenario for “Iraq?” Is the U. S. even capable of so postulating? Of course not. What happens within what used to be “Iraq” is near totally outside U. S. power to constructively influence. Only withdrawal of U. S. military forces from Iraq and its independence from foreign occupation will create conditions wherein authentic, indigenous balance is achievable, along relatively ancient lines of cultural identity and authority.

Yet more significantly, what is the true cost of misadventures piled upon misadventures? If your fellow countrypersons die or suffer serious injury trying to correct recurrent mistakes of U. S. political and military leaders, is that going to be enough? Enough, to what end? Does the U. S. have glue in blood and treasure to overcome millennia-old religious divisions and invent successful resolutions? Such U. S. power is a desert mirage.

It’s becoming much more than tiresome to suffer through incessant and pervasive political / media spin and drumbeat about some preposterous, continued role for the U. S. in Iraq. Its experts declare that various armed factions are now in vigorous, ultimate conflict over Iraq’s future, but only maybe is there a “civil war” going on. Yet, because of “extreme sectarian strife,” unleashed by U. S. military intervention, U. S. occupation must remain. George Orwell’s insights regarding modern propaganda-states are resplendent within such serviceable framing of this political terrain.

Not only is the U. S. posing as the world’s policeman (a notion thoroughly castigated within sophisticated company) in Iraq, with such a theory, but it seems still elevated hubris is ripening: the U. S. is now proposing to help resolve one of the most ancient feuds in all of human history, between Sunni and Shia branches of Islam, . . . all in order to save Iraq?

Did the U. S. enter Iraq to save Iraq? It has irreversibly destroyed Iraq; and now, like some petulant child the U. S. demands to pretend Christian chaperon to the intense Islamic conflicts provoked by its own self-serving yet ignorant recklessness. Can U. S. policy’s fatal flaws find a finer folly?

Such a course would be analogous to demanding Yugoslavia after Tito be preserved, when cultural and historical forces demanded its dissolution. And supporting arguments are no more than that the fact of this massive U. S. failure is itself the very reason to remain in Iraq, or that the U. S.’s international influence will suffer even greater harm if it “gracefully exits.”

Surrounding nations like Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey don’t desire a regional war among themselves, nor to become enveloped in Iraq’s expanding chaos. The U. S. doesn’t need to convince them about that, with phony diplomacy, engineered to maintain its hope that in the end, it will play some very self-serving yet largely superfluous role in affairs.

What will happen is pretty clear. Most of what was once Iraq will become a new Shia dominated entity, the Kurds should have an entity, but avoid conflict with Turkey (which should cooperate because it wants to gain admission to the European Union), and Sunni authority will be diminished to its Al Anbar centered region.

Battle lines between Shia and Sunni, which will apparently arrange such new demographics, should not be patrolled by the U. S.. Once the U. S. leaves, the most likely outcome is that after some contest, these two great branches of Islam will discover an indigenous path to eventual compromise and relative peace. Such a result is likely the view of most people of this region.

But for now, civil chaos is now and has been for some time the rule of the day (and night) in Iraq. U. S. policy has created this situation, but is not capable of controlling or guiding future events in any beneficial manner. Just because the U. S. “cannot afford to lose its war in Iraq,” doesn’t alter the political and cultural certainty that it has already lost. There is no winning with Iraq, or even a palatable or reasonable opportunity for real influence, only a spinning of political consciousness to avoid saying it.

Reclining in the U. S. (bubble), it’s uncannily easy to stoke this war-pyre. Do those persons who declare an imperative of continued, U. S. military occupation of Iraq want to fix up a bayonet and stride into harm’s way? What is the true measure of their concern? Where are the actual spaces within which they speak? What historical understanding do they possess?

Faces of the U. S. fallen in Iraq reveal that media pundits are not among them. Elites are not among them. Upper-class folks, generally not among them. U. S. casualties reflect the composition of U. S. troops, and they are primarily of the underclasses, poor persons desperately trying to discover some form of economic buoyancy, some confident path, some better life. Instead, their gambolling gamble has become a grim, grievous gridlock.

How would you like to die to help the U. S. hopelessly attempt to save its face with its Iraq policy? Life is already pretty short. So, performing these services as ongoing duty, catching the fresh hot flak for old Uncle Sam’s ‘- new and improved -’ debacle, may provide certain folks with just the sort of moral encouragement needed to feel like it’s all really worthwhile, that (often dramatically) shortened or maimed life.

Patriotism has nothing at all to do with these matters in Iraq. Patriotism in genuine wartime resounds when the vast majority of citizens climb over themselves to find a way to constructively fight and die to preserve their national / cultural identity. The surge of military volunteers after 9-11 was motivated to help remove a threat within Afghanistan, not to attack Iraq.

Patriotism which increased ranks within the U. S. military after 9-11 was manipulated through policy designed to transfer attention toward Iraq. And of course, for reason of that obtuse deflection of intent, Afghanistan’s Taliban movement has renewed itself, and now helps control a bumper harvest of opium. U. S. foreign policy has become the biggest and worst joke on the planet.

War, as a term of language, is debased by applying it to what’s transpired in Iraq. As with Vietnam, and other such contrived, U. S. foreign policy adventures, a better description would be, “more or less, unilateral and strategic military interventions.”

With Vietnam, a phony congressional resolution was the gimmick to elevate that conflict into a “war,” and much the same thing occurred with Iraq. The U. S. political regime is not fighting an authentic war in Iraq, but only (grown unconscious of the grim lessons of Vietnam) designing and projecting policies to grossly waste precious resources, to protect many political postures from fatal harm, and for corralling and cajoling its underclasses to become fodder for its fight on the frontiers of that — now dead — neo-conservative notion of forging a “new American century.”

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