WaPo: Victory Is Not an Option

[Yukari Yakumo]

Victory Is Not an Option
The Mission Can't Be Accomplished -- It's Time for a New Strategy

By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007; Page B01

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.

Its gloomy implications -- hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact -- put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.

Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure, and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility for anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around the bush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that oppose the president's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.

For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.

No task is more important to the well-being of the United States. We face great peril in that troubled region, and improving our prospects will be difficult. First of all, it will require, from Congress at least, public acknowledgment that the president's policy is based on illusions, not realities. There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq. Most Americans need no further convincing, but two truths ought to put the matter beyond question:

First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by professional students of the topic. Of the more than 40 democracies created since World War II, fewer than 10 can be considered truly "constitutional" -- meaning that their domestic order is protected by a broadly accepted rule of law, and has survived for at least a generation. None is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. None has deep sectarian and ethnic fissures like those in Iraq.

Continued...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901917.html">WaPo: Victory Not an Option

[antiimperialist]

1. The WAPO growing some balls eh?

Nice.

[patrice]

2. Powerful stuff!

Fodder for phone calls, faxes, email, and letters to our Representatives this week.

[TahitiNut]

3. Odom is absolutely correct! The die was cast in March 2003.

As soon as Cheney/Bush unleashed "Shock and Awe" we were guaranteed that anti-American anger would increase in the Middle East exponentially! There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that their purported objectives would ever be achieved. Ever. No other act by this country has been more destructive of world peace and favorable attitudes toward the U.S. It was worse than treason. It was, and is, a crime against humanity!

[patrice]

4. Amen TNut!

:applause:

Like folks are just going to forget who killed whom if you pave their roads and give them jobs. They'll take your money and tell you whatever you want to hear - until they get a chance to get even.

No one forgets.