Are we “morally responsible” for Iraq?
March 26, 2008 — JaredSenator McCain said today that “[the nation] has incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq,” and our leaving would not only cause the area “to sink back into chaos and extremism,” but would result in ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide.
This novel idea of the United States caring about genocide is news not only to Darfurians, but also to the Kurds during the gassing by Saddam, then backed by the U.S., during the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s, or the Jews in World War 2. We carry a long history of “never agains,” but for the first time in our history we are to believe that this is more than just rhetoric. Apparently McCain, and the rest of the Republican Party, actually cares about the ethnic cleansing this time.
Spending 100 more years in Iraq may seem somewhat daunting, but if it’s able to stop ethnic cleansing in the region, is it worth it? No matter how many U.S. armed forces we lose? No matter how pathetically low our international standing becomes? No matter how weakened we become as a nation?
The want to stay in Iraq is driven by two forces: (1) cheap oil; and (2) the need to appear militarily mighty. McCain’s incarceration during the failed Vietnam war is apparently still ripe in his mind. He would rather subject more soldiers to their deaths than simply cut our losses and leave. Iraq is the Vietnam War for the 2000s, and only time will tell which will be remembered as the bigger foreign blunder.
The only people who should be held morally responsible are the leaders who knowingly lied to the American public to create support for the war. The American people and U.S. soldiers should not be held accountable for lying politicians.
March 26, 2008 at 7:02 PM
As I see it, Iraq today is the result of two historic blunders. The first was the decision to go to war. Saddam Hussein was a very bad man, but did he have to go? There must have been at least ten other regimes at that time that, if subject to forced change, would have involved spilling less innocent blood while creating a better prognosis for the development of a civilized open society.
As a humanitarian initiative, “liberating” the people of Iraq would have been an unusual priority even if the planning and execution of the venture were not the product of abysmal incompetence. Compounding this is the fact that the U.S. did have a compelling interest in bringing about regime change . . . in Afghanistan. It may just have been the ultimate “taking your eye off the ball” moment when our national focus shifted from bold counterterrorism efforts to bloodlust for an unrelated dictator.
However, so much less blood could have been spilled if there was someone with a shred of personal integrity able to get relevant facts about the world into the ear of George W. Bush. If the infamous “Mission Accomplished” moment were followed by American actions suggesting the mission had been accomplished, who can say what the prospects would be for both the U.S. and Iraq going forward from here. Instead, what was so clearly a military occupation continued to be mischaracterized as a war. Worse yet, it remains a war in which objectives are not clearly defined (not to mention a war for which talk of an exit strategy is forbidden amongst executive branch insiders.)
Ultimately it is all about saving face. Possibly the President himself does not understand how much better everything would have been if the invasion had been followed by a prompt demilitarization of our Iraq policy. Certainly he remains hostile to that lifesaving approach.
As with immigration (not to mention a host of lesser issues) John McCain has displayed his own level of personal integrity by shifting position to capture the support of the Republican base. Here it is hard to tell if he is so deeply clueless about geopolitical realities or if he is merely grasping at whatever themes he believes will motivate Republican voters to show up at polling places this November. Either way, a war hero deserves better than to be dragged into such sewers, and the United States of America deserves better than to be led by anyone who supports one of the bloodiest and most blatant follies in the history of American foreign policy.