Henry Kissinger now says that the Iraq war is not winnable, something I thought from the start. talking to the BBS (via MSNBC), he said:
“If you mean by ‘military victory’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible.”
All those factors were there before the war got started. If you combine the fact that Iraq is a nation pieced together from disparate elements that don’t really want to be a country in the first place with neighbors who would be happy to be in control of the same terrirtory you are placing a tall order. Then consider the fact that there never was a united opposition to Saddam’s reign, simply because the various elements of the opposition don’t generally share a vision for the country.
If we allowed democracy to take it’s course, Iraq would likely become an Islamic republic led by the Shi’ites. Unfortunately what we seem to want to produce is a government that is both democratically elected and does what we want it to do. Bluntly, it’s not going to happen.
Before the usual culprits accuse me of being pacifist and not wanting to fight terrorism, that is not my point. I believe that military force should sometimes be used. The problem is that there are those who don’t seem to choose wisely between one use of force and another. There might even have been things that could be accomplished militarily in Iraq. But the Iraq war that actually occurred was, in my view, a strategic error. My concern is not that people were killed, or that some feelings were hurt. My concern is that people were killed without any good and lasting result.
At this point I’m afraid I see no option but to simply declare a set of doable goals–a certain amount of time spent in training, specified equipment levels for the Iraqi forces, and similar things, and then get out. Goals such as a peaceful, secure state are simply not going to happen, and all we’re doing trying to accomplish such goals is wasting time, political capital, money, and most importantly lives.
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