11 July 2007
Giving the Surge a Chance
It is inappropriate to characterize objections to the policy of the Bush Administration on Capitol Hill as efforts “to undermine the war in Iraq.” In his OpEd article in the July 9, 2007 Wall Street Journal, Pete Hegseth missed the point of our being in Iraq: the objective is not to win a war; it is to pursue a policy. Unfortunately, the policy is wrong: overthrowing a dictator who was not a threat to our security, and whose presence was essential to keeping Iraq together in one piece (notwithstanding the debatable benefit of that geopolitical arrangement).
Each of the “falsehoods” that Mr. Hegseth claims to refute is a distortion;
1) Of course the “surge” is a failure because the longer it persists, the less it is a surge and the more it is an escalation, with no end in sight.
2) “Political reconciliation” cannot be achieved through force of arms.
3) To summarize General Petraeus’s mission as pacifying Baghdad is exactly to acknowledge that the “whack-a-mole” game is afoot.
4) “Civil War” is a red herring. Iraq is faced with chaos in the absence of a strong center, which the U.S. proudly destroyed.
President Bush seeks to hide behind the military when he doesn’t have an answer to why we are in Iraq. The American people are fed up with this subterfuge. Dissolving refuges for international terrorists, like Al Qaeda, takes more than attacking their proven few bases; it requires a lasting effort to convince the terrorists’ supporters that their nihilistic beliefs are a dead end.
It is inappropriate to characterize objections to the policy of the Bush Administration on Capitol Hill as efforts “to undermine the war in Iraq.” In his OpEd article in the July 9, 2007 Wall Street Journal, Pete Hegseth missed the point of our being in Iraq: the objective is not to win a war; it is to pursue a policy. Unfortunately, the policy is wrong: overthrowing a dictator who was not a threat to our security, and whose presence was essential to keeping Iraq together in one piece (notwithstanding the debatable benefit of that geopolitical arrangement).
Each of the “falsehoods” that Mr. Hegseth claims to refute is a distortion;
1) Of course the “surge” is a failure because the longer it persists, the less it is a surge and the more it is an escalation, with no end in sight.
2) “Political reconciliation” cannot be achieved through force of arms.
3) To summarize General Petraeus’s mission as pacifying Baghdad is exactly to acknowledge that the “whack-a-mole” game is afoot.
4) “Civil War” is a red herring. Iraq is faced with chaos in the absence of a strong center, which the U.S. proudly destroyed.
President Bush seeks to hide behind the military when he doesn’t have an answer to why we are in Iraq. The American people are fed up with this subterfuge. Dissolving refuges for international terrorists, like Al Qaeda, takes more than attacking their proven few bases; it requires a lasting effort to convince the terrorists’ supporters that their nihilistic beliefs are a dead end.
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