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argument in the Capitol last week was about victory. Legislators such as
Sen. John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham believe, against all the evidence,
that victory in Iraq is possible. They insist like puppets that "the surge
has been a success" and see signs of victory. The president proclaims that
we are winning the war. Gen. David Petraeus says that the progress is
fragile and reversible, that there is not yet light at the end of the
tunnel, victory is not right around the corner and the champagne is still at
the back of the refrigerator. We know that many in the Pentagon think victory in Iraq is impossible. Navy Adm. William Fallon was dumped because he agreed with them and disagreed with Petraeus. He argued that the military is traumatized by the duration of the war and the constant increase in tours of duty. Fallon was, some of the neocons say, guilty of insubordination. If you tell the civilian leaders that this war cannot be won and that military is stretched to its limit, you're insubordinate. The president knows better. |
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There was a temporary decline in violence
because Petraeus bought out the Sunni tribes, and Moqtada al-Sadr, for
reasons of his own, called a truce -- perhaps at the instigation of his
Iraqi allies. But violence was in full swing again while the congressional
testimony raged on. About 1,500 members of the Iraqi Army deserted in the
middle of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's attack on the Shites in southern
Iraq. Yet the neocon twins who thought this war up, Fred Kagan and Bill
Kristol, smilingly proclaim that we're on the road to victory. |
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Could the war have been won? The question
assumes that he went to war with clear goals -- and clear means of winning
it. Perhaps with the 300,000 troops that Gen. Eric Shinseki had requested, a
sophisticated occupation policy and shrewd administrators to sustain the
initial victory, the war could have ended four years ago. However, as is
evident, most Iraqis don't want to be occupied by Americans. Then-Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld thought that "shock and awe" would do the trick
with less than half that number. The conceit that an extra couple of
brigades would end violence and force the Iraqi government to get its act
together was of the same order of fatuous folly.
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 A Stupid, Unjust, And Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007 Father Greeley calls to task those who justified, planned and executed the war and reminds us that God weeps at the destruction of war, whether lives lost are ‘ours’ or ‘theirs.’  Order
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