The Last Thing They Will Ever Admit About Iraq

[Plaid Adder]

No, it is not the fact that Iraq is engaged in a full-blown sectarian civil war. This will eventually become so clear to everyone who's not George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Tony Snow that even they will stop denying it. But even after they've admitted that, there is one thing that they will refuse to admit until long after they leave office, and it is this:

We do not control the outcome.

For me that has always been the most obvious pragmatic reason for pulling the U.S. army out of Iraq. The assumption underlying all this crap about "cutting and running" and "staying the course" and "quitting" is that by remaining in Iraq we will eventually be able to effect some sort of positive resolution. Positive from a U.S. point of view, that is. Well, it was clear to many of us a couple years ago, and it's really fucking obvious now:

We do not control the outcome.

There is a war going on there now to which our troops are relevant only as targets, recruiting tools, and occasions for the whipping up of hatred against the 'official' Iraqi government. It is a war that nobody in our government understands, fought for reasons that our government refuses to acknowledge, led by people our government wouldn't negotiate with even if they could track them down. We created the conditions that made this war possible by invading the country and removing from power the repressive regime that had prevented the Shiias from causing any trouble for the Sunnis--and then standing around wondering where the flowers were while the country was looted and every guy in Baghdad who had ever fancied himself a ruler started recruiting and arming his personal militia. We broke it, for sure. But we cannot fix it, because

We do not control the outcome.

And it is not just the Bush faction that refuses to admit this. It is going to be a hard sell to the American people too, because nobody wants to admit that our military could possibly be this impotent. But for this to be over--for our troops; it will be generations before this is over for the Iraqis--that is what we have to get people to understand. No matter how brave our individual soldiers are, they are in a situation that long ago passed beyond their collective control.

The war will go on with or without them. The bloodshed will go on with or without them. They cannot stop the violence; so the least we can do is get them out of it. That way, at least we'll know we're not making it worse--which at this point is about all we can hope for.

:argh:

The Plaid Adder

[Dhalgren]

1. Dead on, as usual. The only thing the US controls is the location

of its troops. They should be located to home right now, today, this very minute. Don't tell anyone, don't announce it, no fanfare; just one morning some Iraqi will look around herself and say, "Hey, where are the Americans (or 'Jews', as they call us)?"

[The Magistrate]

2. Well Said, Ma'am!

Most acute, and it bears repeating: "We do not control the outcome."

[BlueEyedSon]

3. No, the last thing they will admit is that every reason they gave to invade

was false. Why would they never, ever admit that? Simple: The Hague.

And the "real" reasons?
Oil, Profits, Political Capital

[rfranklin]

11. Permanent oil-grabbing proximity was their objective and it has been...

established with the fortresses that are being completed as we speak. And those will be held whether we have Republicans or Democrats in office. Wouldn't be prudent to give up all that oil!

[tgnyc]

4. Perfectly said. The unwritten rule is that it is impermissible to

ever suggest that our armed forces are less than omnipotent. Well, they are. And they can't make anything happen in Iraq anymore. They are bravbe, well-trained, well-equiped (militarily), but they can not make anything happen in Iraq anymore. It's over.

[LonelyLRLiberal]

5. The Bush Regime will only have excuses and finger-pointing.

They'll say "if" this, "if only" that - they'll never accept the reality or the responsibility.

[Norrin Radd]

16. I bet they won't be pointing those purple ink-stained fingers, any longer. n/t

[warrens]

6. And we didn't even get the fucking oil

I heard a general on one of the gabfests saying the oil pipelines are now undefensible. They just pump what they can between explosions, fix as fast as they can, pump a little more, then BOOM.

[wilt the stilt]

7. One of the main reasons

why republicans like to go to war is that they believe it strengthens the President in the eyes of Americans. They like little wars like Grenada. They completely miscalculated this one and it left them in quicksand. It cost them the house and the senate and soon the presidency. What dunces.

[Rude Horner]

8. Excellent point.

And I plan on using that argument from now on, when anybody talks about why we shouldn't "cut and run." :puke:

[JetCityLiberal]

9. You are the best writer on DU

Thank you Plaid Adder :thumbsup:

[demo_not_full]

10. I remember RFK ...

When he first spoke against Vietnam war, once he realized the devastation, it had been evident that the people were led to believe the worst if we pulled out. It was his thought that stopping the war isn't quitting, but moving forward in a different and more positive way, instead of killing. Today isn't any different, the same propaganda is being used on the Iraq war. Yes, a war has been started over there(by us) and there's no telling what will happen when we leave there. But at least it's a positive move to spare lives and as long as we live in fear by maintaining the war, we are showing the world that we are cowards, and will ultimately become the weakest country. Resources only go so far, and so do welcomes.

[mconvente]

12. Depressing yet true...

We caused this situation, and we can't fix it - as you stated many times, it is out of control. Perhaps all this Shia vs. Shiite fighting would have occurred once Saddam died himself, but perhaps not. Gotta keep optimistic about the world, despite how hard that may be sometimes.

[w4rma]

13. Good point. (nt)

[Lisa]

14. they are not so powerful that wishing something will make it so!

That's something which very small children are dismayed to learn (and there have been some wonderful SF stories about kids who believed they had incredible super powers and were SO disappointed when they learned that they were, for better or for worse, human beings ....)

As you say -- we do not control the outcome. This is even deeper than having to admit that you've been wrong about something. Grownups have to come to terms with this lack of control, on a much more personal scale, in their daily lives. (As in "someday you're doing to die".) Some of us cope by denying it, and trying to impose control on individual households and families. Others "go with the flow" and live in the moment, or else try to work around the situation by influencing some events. But still -- we do not control the outcome.

[ConsAreLiars]

15. From Nir Rosen:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/27/1447216

"Bush has militia, the American army, one of the many militias operating in Iraq. But the American Army is lost in Iraq, as it has been since it arrived. Striking at Sunnis, striking at Shias, striking at mostly innocent people. Unable to distinguish between anybody, certainly unable to wield any power, except on the immediate street corner where it’s located. So, it just doesn’t matter."

[Mendocino]

19. Spitting in the wind strategy.

One day, the US is helping Shiias by fighting Sunnis, next day helping Sunnis by fighting Shiias. And on it goes.

[eridani]

17. What those who want to "fix" Iraq really want is--

--to smash a set of dishes with a hammer, and then (using nothing but a hammer and a sack of clay) make a new set of dishes. Can't be done.

[Disturbed]

18. When the waring factions have come to terms they will

turn their wrath on the US/UK Occupiers.

[justjones]

20. But American hubris says we can control everything. nt

[maxsolomon]

21. shoulda woulda coulda

we have LOST. bush has thrown our hegemony on the trash heap. a strategic blunder on a historic scale - like the spanish armada or napoleon's march to moscow.

every effort must be made to assure that the defeat affixes to the republicans who started & abetted this fiasco, rather than the democrats who are going to extricate us from it.

hey tony blair, you could have stopped this but you signed up anyway - you're a dumb fuck.

[leeroysphitz]

22. CONTROL. Thats the key word here. Thanks for pointing it out.

Our entire military philosophy is based on the notion of control. Controlling every aspect of the battle to greatest degree possible. It's a wholistic approach to war. In Iraq, in this occupation, however, we have failed to take and or maintain control of a number of critical elements

When we go to war we expect to control when and where we engage the enemy. We've long since lost control of that crucial element.

We expect to control the skies above the battle field. We do but in this type of conflict this measure of control is meaningless.

We expect to control the civilian population in certain areas. We don't have complete control even in the green zone.

With the proliferation of IEDs we no longer have complete control of our supply lines.

The list goes on.

The situation appears completely out of control but it isn't. Not completely. We do have one last measure of control.

We still control how and when we disengage and end an occupation that has no achievable goals and that continues to cause needless deaths on both sides.



sp

[Karenina]

24. Kick for PA!

Excellent post Leeroysphits!

[madhoosier]

26. Control

Excellent point on control, from the earliest days of the invasion control was slipping from our grasp; we chose to disband the remaining Iraqi army and lost control of them and their weapons. Rumsfeld chose to go to war with too few troops and lost control of 377 tons of super high explosives and uncounted tons of additional weapons that then fell into the hands of the insurgency. By disbanding the police forces then failing to control the looting we lost civil society in Baghdad.

Post war Iraq was to be the great Neoconservative economic experiment, virtually all government control of the economy was intentionally eliminated, the state operated industries were disbanded without having replacement infrastructure in place so even what little of the economy that survived America’s bombing ground to a halt.

The only damn things Rumsfeld did bother to control were the Ministry of Oil and the propaganda.

Now that Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki are involved in a very public pi##ing contest I’ll bet Bush won’t have the control to avoid waterering down his own shoes.

[kentuck]

23. The American troops are just another tribe in the mix...

albeit a very strong tribe...

[Morgana LaFey]

25. To me, it's self-evident. Do you really think

they don't want to admit it? There's no admitting TO it, from my perspective. It is what it is.

You may be right. Shocking to me, tho.