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The New York Times
Opinion
Mission Still Not
Accomplished
EDITORIAL,
nytimes.com on the Web, March 20, 2008
It has been five years since the
United States invaded Iraq and the world watched in horror as what seemed like a
swift victory by modern soldiers and 21st-century weapons became a nightmare of
spiraling violence, sectarian warfare, insurgency, roadside bombings and ghastly
executions. Iraq’s economy was destroyed, and America’s reputation was
shredded in the torture rooms of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the
Central Intelligence Agency’s secret prisons.
These were hard and very costly lessons for a country that had emerged from the
cold war as the world’s sole remaining superpower. Shockingly, President
Bush seems to have learned none of them.
.o0o.
In a speech on Wednesday, the start
of the war’s sixth year, Mr. Bush was stuck in the Neverland of his “Mission
Accomplished” speech. In his mind’s eye, the invasion was a “remarkable
display of military effectiveness” that will be studied for generations.
The war has placed the nation on the brink of a great “strategic victory” in
Iraq and against terrorists the world over.
Even now, Mr. Bush talks of Iraqi troops who “took off their uniforms and faded
into the countryside to fight the emergence of a free Iraq” — when everyone
knows that the American pro-consul, L. Paul Bremer III, overrode Mr. Bush’s
national security team and, with the president’s blessing, made the
catastrophically bad decision to disband the Iraqi Army and police force.
Mr. Bush wants Americans to believe that Iraq was on the verge of “full-blown
sectarian warfare” when he boldly ordered an escalation of forces around Baghdad
last year. In fact, sectarian warfare was raging for months while Mr. Bush
refused to listen to the generals, who wanted a new military approach, or to the
vast majority of Americans, who just wanted him to end the war.
All evidence to the contrary, Mr. Bush is still trying to make it seem as if Al
Qaeda in Iraq was connected to the Al Qaeda that attacked America on Sept. 11,
2001. He tried to justify an unjustifiable war by ticking off benefits of
deposing Saddam Hussein, but he somehow managed to forget the nonexistent
weapons of mass destruction.
Vice President Dick Cheney was equally deep in denial on Monday when he declared
at a news conference in Baghdad that it has all been “well worth the effort.”
Tell that to the families of nearly 4,000 Americans who have been killed — far
too many of them because Mr. Bush and his arrogantly incompetent secretary of
defense, Donald Rumsfeld, failed to plan for an insurgency that many others saw
coming. Thousands more Americans have been wounded and deprived of
adequate post-conflict care while Iraqis have died by the tens of thousands.
More than five million have been driven from their homes.
Add in a cost to the United States that some say could exceed $3 trillion, the
new political opening created for Iran, the incalculable damage to America’s
reputation and the havoc wreaked on Iraqi society. Few lament Saddam
Hussein’s passing, but the war has left Iraq a broken country, made the United
States more vulnerable, not safer, and stretched the American military to a
point that compromises its ability to fight elsewhere.
The increase in American forces last year initially produced a steep decline in
insurgent attacks. But the conflict has drifted into a stalemate with the
levels of violence remaining constant, and unacceptably high, from November 2007
through early 2008, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
As Mr. Cheney visited Iraq, a bombing killed 43 people.
.o0o.
One of the cruelest ironies is that
Iraqis have not taken advantage of the American troop surge, which was intended
to create space for them to resolve their political differences. After
much foot-dragging, they passed a 2008 budget and a law granting amnesty to
thousands of Sunnis and others in Iraqi jails. But a law on sharing oil
wealth is stalled and one aimed at allowing former Baathist Party members back
into government may actually drive many out. Another bill, mandating
provincial elections by October, was passed by Parliament, then vetoed by the
Presidency Council of Iraq’s top leaders. Only after pressure from Mr.
Cheney was it suddenly revived.
The plight of Iraqis uprooted by violence is further proof of how broken the
country is. Some 2.7 million Iraqis are displaced internally and another
2.4 million have fled as refugees, mostly to Syria and Jordan. That’s
nearly 20 percent of Iraq’s prewar population — the kind of inconvenient truth
the Bush administration would rather ignore.
Although thousands of refugees returned to Iraq last year, most ended up leaving
again because they did not feel secure. American, Iraqi and international
aid to Iraqi refugees is insufficient, and many refugees, their savings depleted
and barred from most jobs, are despairing, aid workers say. No one knows
when — or if — they can ever return. Syria and Jordan generously allowed
Iraqis in, but the huge numbers could destabilize both countries and fuel
anti-America resentment.
The United States agreed to admit a paltry 12,000 Iraqi refugees in fiscal year
2008; so far, only 2,000 have been processed.
Brighter spots — Iraq’s economy is projected to grow 7 percent this year — are
offset by problems: millions of Iraqis still don’t have clean water and
medical care, thousands are jobless and the Iraqi Army, while improving, cannot
defend the country on its own.
.o0o.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney refuse to let
these facts interfere with their benighted notion of keeping troops in Iraq
indefinitely and insisting that Iraq — not Afghanistan and Pakistan where Al
Qaeda and the Taliban have gained ground — must remain America’s top priority.
It was clear long ago that Mr. Bush had no plan for victory, only a plan for
handing this mess to his successor. Americans need to choose a
president with the vision to end this war as cleanly as possible.
(Emphasis Added)
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