Why liberal warhawks are wrong

The Ishtar Sheraton Hotel is reflected in a pool
of water at a new park on the banks of the
Tigris River in Baghdad in this March 21, 2005
file photo. In the months after the invasion, the
Sheraton Baghdad was a veritable hive, buzzing
with businessmen, politicians, journalists and the
military. Now it is all but dead, a symbol of how
Iraq's worsening insurgency is sucking the life
out of the city


I haven't written about Iraq in a while, but I wanted to discuss why liberal warhawks are so wrong.

If you are a reader of Bill Lind. Tony Cordesman or any of the professional military experts, not ideologues like Max Boot and Victor Davis Hansen, you have concluded long ago, our war in Iraq is a folly.

Why?

We cannot establish any kind of order in Iraq, and it's not just the streets. Saddam's trial ended in a brawl, the politicians cannot make up their mind on what to call the country and the police forces are completely penetrated by the resistance.

There is nothing current US forces can do to win the war. The Iraqis can contest any ground and control most of the cities. When poligenerals say the Iraqi forces will be ready, that's a lie, a baldface lie. Half the people you need are killing Americans.

First of all, the Iraqis are little better than merceneries. Every time a car bomb blows up in from of a police station, someone gave them the info they needed. Second, the leadership is weak.

Remember, Iraqis withstood eight years of brutal warfare against Iran. There are a lot of good small unit and company and battalion leaders in the country. Just not fighting for us.

The liberals argue that we can't leave Iraq a mess.

Have they seen Iraqi politics lately? A minister wants to ban liquor sales at the airport. You can't even drive to the airport without bodyguards, yet this is his priority. Iranian agent of influence Ahmed Chalabi runs the oil ministry. Badly, but he runs it all the same.

Iraqis are far more interested in their grudges than running a country. The Kurds think they can either get their way or have their country. Sure, under the treads of Turkish tanks. It is as if we found the worst people possible to form a government, then expected them to perform.

But the liberal warhawks foolishly accept Bush's definitions and assessments, when they are highly flawed.

Rumsfeld's transformation is a disaster in the making. The US has exposed how horribly it does basic infantry tasks, as the bodies litter Iraq. They seem to think it's just a matter of adjusting a few things and fixing what is a deeply flawed policy. It isn't. From the day the first Thunder Run took place in Baghdad, the US didn't have the army to win this war.

Bush's America first policy doomed the US in Iraq from the start. Normally, Pakistani and Indian troops would have done the basic security tasks and area patrolling. But since intervention in Iraq would have meant government toppling riots, that didn't happen and the resistance filled right in.

When you hear someone like Joe Biden talk about internationalization, you have to wonder if he's been dipping into Arlen Spector's pain meds. Tony Blair has his job because everyone else is too incompetent to do it. No European government can now join us in Iraq. They would be tossed out of office overnight. Those that did are pulling back. What started out as a way to make friends with the US, has turned into a political disaster.

And then you have Peter "PNAC's Bitch" Beinart signing on to some manifesto they came up with. They failed. Why endorse them?

But what is clear and the warhawks need to realize it and come to understand that we will leave the Iraqis to their fate:

1) No one wants to fight this war. When you ask liberal warhawks to enlist, they act as if you are insane. If they won't fight, no one else will

2) Iraqis talk support, but back the resistance to a frightening degree. The resistance's intelligent net is comprehensive.

3) The current Iraqi government is not only corrupt, but in hock to Iran.

With these conditions, we will only fail in Iraq. It is time to realize that and leave.

posted by Steve @ 12:00:00 PM