The Stuff That
Happened
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, March 19, 2006
Three years ago, the United States
invaded Iraq. We can all run the story through our minds: Shock and
Awe, Coalition of the Willing, Mission Accomplished, looting, "Stuff happens,"
no W.M.D., suicide bombers, purple fingers, blasted shrine.
Many who supported the invasion have taken this anniversary to argue that it all
would have been worthwhile if things had been run better. They argue that
if the coalition forces had been large enough to actually secure the country, to
keep insurgents from raiding Saddam Hussein's ammunition depots, to give the
people a sense of safety, the country might well be on the road to a hopeful
future.
We doubt it. The last three years have shown how little our national
leaders understood Iraq, and have reminded us how badly attempts at liberation
from the outside have gone in the past. Given where we are now, the
question of whether a botched invasion created a lost opportunity might be moot,
except for one thing. The man who did the botching, Donald Rumsfeld, is
still the secretary of defense.
The generals on the ground understood what a disaster they were creating in the
pell-mell race to Baghdad, which left in its wake an entire country full of
places where Saddam Hussein's loyalists could regroup and prepare to carry on a
permanent war against the Americans and their fellow Iraqis. As the new
book "Cobra II" by Michael Gordon of The Times and Bernard Trainor underscores,
the generals in the field were overruled by directives from Washington, where
military decisions were being made by men who were guided not by reality, but by
their own beloved myths about what Iraq was like and how the war was going to be
won.
Chances are that at the time George W. Bush did not have an inkling of how badly
he was being served by the decision makers at the Pentagon. But the fact
that Mr. Rumsfeld continues to hold his job tells us that Mr. Bush doesn't care,
that he prefers living in the same dream world that his secretary of defense
inhabits.
In their wishful thinking, Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld undoubtedly tell themselves
what they tell us: that the Iraqi people are better off than they were
under the brutal dictator, that the Iraqi security forces are gradually learning
how to take over defense of their own country and that a unified government is
still a good possibility. It's true that many Iraqis are better off.
Others are in far worse straits — their homes have been ruined, their relatives
killed, their jobs evaporated and their ability to walk the streets in safety
obliterated. Women's rights are being threatened in the south, and
sectarian warfare has put families with mixed Shiite-Sunni ancestry at risk in
their own neighborhoods. It is hard to quantify relative degrees of misery
and pain in these circumstances. But unlike the horrors of Saddam Hussein,
the horrors of the present can be laid at America's doorstep.
If the mission in Iraq was to create a stable democracy in the heart of the
Middle East and inspire neighboring countries to follow the same path, the
results have been crushingly bad — unless Mr. Bush regards the election of
Palestinian terrorists as the leaders in Gaza and the West Bank as a step
forward. Iran is extending its sway by the hour. In Afghanistan,
American forces are too thin to do much more than protect the central government
in downtown Kabul.
The idea that Iraqi security forces are poised to take over the job of
protecting the people in a unified country is almost ludicrous. Many of
those forces are actually sectarian militias that have been armed by the
coalition forces, but not changed by them. So far, attempts at creating a
government that could bring the country some modicum of stability have fallen
apart. There are no leaders with the strength or credibility or even
desire to rally anyone but their own co-religionists or ethnic group.
When Americans ask themselves whether anything has been accomplished in Iraq,
they do take note that there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil
since 9/11. That has been an enormous blessing, for which law enforcement
officials can offer no explanation other than somewhat perplexed guesses.
It's possible that the chaos in Iraq has distracted Al Qaeda, diverting its
energy to fomenting civil war between Sunnis and Shiites in the heart of the
Middle East. If that is so, we may have bought short-term peace while
creating a training ground for terrorists and a no man's land where they can
operate with impunity.
The Iraq debacle ought to serve as a humbling lesson for future generations of
American leaders — although, if our leaders were capable of being humbled, they
could have simply looked back to Vietnam. For the present, our goal must
be to minimize the damage, through the urgent diplomacy of the current
ambassador and forceful reminders that American forces are not prepared to
remain for one day in a country whose leaders prefer civil war to peaceful
compromise.
While we are distracted by picking up the pieces, there is no time to imagine
what the world might be like if George Bush had chosen to see things as they
were instead of how he wanted them to be three years ago. History will
have more time to consider the question.
David Unger, senior foreign affairs editorial writer, answers
25 Questions About Iraq online at
nytimes.com/timesselect.
|
