18 April 2007
Changing Minds on Iraq
It’s not up to the military to end a war. Fighting a war is their responsibility. Starting and ending a war are political decisions.
Everyone now realizes that the professed reasons for going to war in Iraq—the threat to U.S. security posed by Saddam’s supposed possession or development of WMD, his concocted collusion with Al Qaeda, his denial of liberty to the majority of Iraqi citizens—were, at best, only excuses for unleashing the American war machine. Both the White House and Congress, not to mention the electorate, have changed their minds on whether the U.S. military should be there at all, and on the justification for withdrawing it from Iraq.
The military is part of this debate, too. Its overall objective is to protect itself from destruction so its soldiers may live to fight again. It can do that the Bush way—at the expense of Iraqi freedom and security; or it can do it the way the Democratic opposition proposes—admit a mistake and make an orderly retreat.
The trauma of 9/11 led most of us to react without sufficient reflection and to accept ill-advised measures that ended up costing more in blood, capital, and influence than any of us anticipated. That can be said generously to apply to Bush as well as to his political opponents. Now is not the time to show our troops in Iraq the money, as advocated by the VFW and American Legion commanders in the April 12, 2007, Wall Street Journal. It is time to show them something more. Good judgment demands that the U.S. pull them out of Iraq and restore them to their role as protectors of the nation’s security.
It’s not up to the military to end a war. Fighting a war is their responsibility. Starting and ending a war are political decisions.
Everyone now realizes that the professed reasons for going to war in Iraq—the threat to U.S. security posed by Saddam’s supposed possession or development of WMD, his concocted collusion with Al Qaeda, his denial of liberty to the majority of Iraqi citizens—were, at best, only excuses for unleashing the American war machine. Both the White House and Congress, not to mention the electorate, have changed their minds on whether the U.S. military should be there at all, and on the justification for withdrawing it from Iraq.
The military is part of this debate, too. Its overall objective is to protect itself from destruction so its soldiers may live to fight again. It can do that the Bush way—at the expense of Iraqi freedom and security; or it can do it the way the Democratic opposition proposes—admit a mistake and make an orderly retreat.
The trauma of 9/11 led most of us to react without sufficient reflection and to accept ill-advised measures that ended up costing more in blood, capital, and influence than any of us anticipated. That can be said generously to apply to Bush as well as to his political opponents. Now is not the time to show our troops in Iraq the money, as advocated by the VFW and American Legion commanders in the April 12, 2007, Wall Street Journal. It is time to show them something more. Good judgment demands that the U.S. pull them out of Iraq and restore them to their role as protectors of the nation’s security.
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