Adele, if I thought there were some way we could fix the situation in Iraq, I might not support withdrawal. As it stands, healing the sectarian rifts seems to be entirely outside the power of the American military or any other foreign military. So there's nothing we can do to fix the biggest problem afflicting the country.

What do you do if you made a promise to help someone, but there's nothing effective you can do to help them? That's basically where we stand now.

The funny thing about the Pottery Barn analogy is that if you break something, you can totally fix the situation and make everyone happy by paying for it. But Iraq isn't like that. All the king's horses and all the king's money won't put Humpty Dumpty together again.

The pottery barn principle is, to put it simply: INSANE. Rather the analogy should be: you splashed paint on this Van Gogh masterpiece, so now you have to paint another one.
The point being - the moral question begs the question of qualifications. The U.S. is simply and wholly unqualified to 'fix" Iraq. Has three years of occupation not driven that lesson home, Adele? I am amazed that something so simple seems to be so hard to see. Nations exist as a compound of moral yearning and hard self interest, plus ethnicities, cultural patterns, languages, past paths, etc. They are masterpieces, not bits of assembly stamped pottery. Even when they are dysfunctional they are masterpieces.

A narrow set of goals with a check on American power was, from the beginning, the only hope for the Americans to be 'helpful' in Iraq. The Americans refused that check, tried to aggrandize the power to themselves, tried to actually delegate the Iraqis who would have the power, and failed miserably. Now their very presence is an attack on the legitimacy of the government, insofar as the government can't even institute simple things - like, please don't build that wall in Baghdad. By making the government seem powerless, by attending to America's interests - the oil bill - and using the supposed 'democracy ' as merely window dressing to get what we want, and by using reconstruction projects as American goldbricking projects, we've pretty much shot the wad as far as morality is concerned.
Redemption can come from planning - that is planning - did I say planning? - a non-chaotic withdrawal. That requires benchmarks that work, and a flexible timetable. Drift and rhetoric are not evidences of a superior moral sensibility, but of moral paralysis.

Afghanistan in the Nineties is a poor analogy. We didn't invade Afghanistan, occupy it for several years, then withdraw militarily. We supplied arms to Afghan resistance against the Soviets, then turned our backs after the USSR withdrew.

There is no reason that we cannot aid the Iraqi people after we withdraw militarily.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.

You're sort of right, I think, but let me explain where I take issue with this.

The pottery barn principle should be re-stated: before you break it, you'd better be sure you *can* buy it.

George Bush and his pals didn't do due diligence to be sure we could afford Iraq before they broke it. In fact, to the extent they did their homework, it clearly showed what we all now know: we can't afford Iraq.

We've already failed the pottery barn principle as I've revised it. What can we do to fix things in the face of clear evidence we can fix nothing? Well, nothing. We can either keep breaking Iraq into more and more little pieces, hurting more and more people there and in our own army, or we can go home and let them -- a sovereign nation once more -- try to sort things out for themselves with whatever help we can provide.

The problem with the pottery barn principle is, basically, what happened in Iraq: sometimes there's just nothing you can do. And it's foolish to keep trying.

Dear Ms. Stan: Your sentiments are admirable. But if we don't know what to do, and we don't, then the course of action that causes the least harm to all parties is to stop doing anything and leave the premises.
It's a civil war. We can either pick sides, which has its own set of moral hazards, or bail. Bailing isn't a positive good, but at least we will no longer be in process of destroying our own military as a combat force.

If you break something at the Pottery Barn, you don't move into the store for three years and tell them how to restock it.

I think the pottery barn analogy is another of the signs that people in the run up to the war had simply lost their minds. It never made any sense, and yet we were all told it did make sense. And people like Adele stan still buy it.

Here's the way I put it to people who tell me "but its the pottery barn rule." The pottery barn rule is that "you break it you bought it." For instance: if you break a mirror in a store you have to pay for it--but you can't bring it home with you and use it like a mirror because its *&^% broken and it can't be used that way.

That's one way in which the phrse is inapt. Others on the post have shown many other ways in which the phrsae just doesn't hold up as a guidline to what we should do in iraq. But it seems to have done its job simply distracting people from what was really going on.

We didn't go into a store and break a thing--we broke intoa *country* and killed a huge number of people, destroyed a functioning government, installed a non-functioning government, demanded that they pass a bunch of laws to their own detriment, attempted to force them to sign over their property (the oil law) to us, tortured and killed their people, bombed their hospitals, closed their universities, opened their borders to their historic enemies and--oh yeah!--wanted to be thanked for it.

I don't think any single phrase could sum up the absurdity and the arrogance of thinking that anything short of a century or two of monetary reparations could make up for what we've done. but come to think of it, that is the *real* pottery barn rule. You break it *you pay for it.* You don't own the whole damn store.

aimai

There is no evidence to suggest we CAN fix it, and no amount of guilt over our responsbility for breaking it can change that.

Aimai, I echo those sentiments completely.

"We have an obligation to try to fix it"

We have tried. To the tune of several years, billions of dollars, and thousands of American lives.

Perhaps you've been watching Food Network since 2003?

We can't fix it. Nobody can fix it except the Iraqis themselves, and how bloody that will be is entirely up to them.

I would add, that about all we can do is acknowledge our fault in making the mess, and we can pay reparations.

We should probably set conditions on what kind of reparations and what kind of Iraqi society we'll pay them to.

When Iraq becomes that kind of society, we'll pay up, with interest. But while they're a bunch of genocidal theocratic ratfuckers, we won't pay a dime more.

The U.S. does have responsibility for what is and will happen in Iraq. Unfortunately, there are only bad choices, and one must choose the least worse option. Our continued presence is doing more harm than good.

To use a Pottery Barn type analogy: you go into a store and break something, offer to pay for it and clean it up and then keep breaking things as you try to clean up your last mess -- at some point the best option from the storeowner's perspective is that you just leave and let her try to clean it up herself.

Adele: The Pottery Barn analogy is pure American arrogance. First off, all you did was smash it. You may think that as a result you now own it, but you haven't paid a cent for it. Ask the Iraqis.

The money Congress just authorized? That's just to pay for more smashing. Like last week's Blackwater rampages.

As for your "anti-war" party, Kucinich was the only Democratic candidate with the balls to reject the "oil-law" benchmark as attempted theft of Iraq's only natural resource by the U.S. oil barons who drummed up the war in the first place.

The Iraqis overwhelmingly want you out. Drop the crocodile tears, and get the f--- out.

It seems to me that most commenters have based their reasoning on a set of false choices. The choice is not simply between doing things as they've always been done since the Iraq invasion -- torturing, profiteering, etc. -- and getting out. There's another choice that no one dares to consider: doing things differently.

Honestly, I think the notion that withdrawal is the "peace position" is every bit as arrogant as the meglomania that got us into this situation. Peace for whom?

At the very least, we have an obligation to repair the medical system before we leave. And to make sure that people can get food. And to pay attention to the current dynamics, like in Anbar province where, Spencer Ackerman reports, the native Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda.

I'm not for this war. But to leave things as they are now is irresponsible and selfish in the short term, and an invitation to annihilation -- via a much broader, multinational conflict -- in the long term.

Ms. Stan,

As we move towards a the eventual end of the Iraq fiasco, let us not fall into Vietnam type paranoia. Iraq must be handled in a way that allows for troop drawdown, and for a sharp increase in diplomatic efforts to start a serious rebuilding. Albert Speer-esque "Embassies" are not included.

The only winners have been the Mullahs Ms. Stan, and without them there will be no peace in Iraq. This was seen as early as 2002, as the only possible outcome, the ONLY possible outcome! Now you shudder at the prospect?

Ending the hostilities will open the door to the blowback that has been foretold for 5 years. You are suddenly worried about this?! What stuff is this?

Prolonging this gruesome occupation does not serve anyone save the homocidal madness of the Neo-Con cabal. Ending this gory bloodfest abruptly creates a power vacuum likely to sweep in who-knows-what. But not ending this disasterous occupation merely prolongs the agony of all sides.

Fixing the medical system? With what and how? We can't fix our own system. If you think the international community has any stomach to clean up after Bush's mistakes without assurances that Bush and his grisly gang will be held accountable for this enormity, you are dreaming.

We are stuck in a horrible position. Staying prolongs the bloodshed. Leaving opens the door to lunacy. But, a cessation of aggressive military action and conversion to rebuilding may find further difficulty as we are hated outsiders in the eyes of the Iraqis: we are the Abu Ghraib torturers, the "criminals" who shot down families trying to escape Fallujah, the killers of children, and family people who couldn't understand English anymore than our troops understand Arabic. We have seen them lying dead in the streets, torn in two by indiscriminate aerial bombardment, torn to shreds and being carried by grieving loved ones, dead.

And now we have to listen to revived, revised "peace with honor" schemes?

End hostilities, start an immediate diplomatic offensive in the entire region, get as much help from the international community as we can, consult with and pay respects to the Mullahs, carefully draw down troops, Start rebuilding as possible, and in order to make this work, we may have to bring Bush, Cheney, and the neo-con cabal along with most supporting administration officials to justice at The Hague in order to demonstrate to the world that we are sincere about needing assistance to rebuild Iraq, and ending the imperial phantasmagoria of a homocidal clique of ideologues.

MS. Stan,
I'm sick and tired of hearing the "peace position" characatured as somehow as bad, illogical and ultimately isolationist as the war position was.

a) There is no "peace position" there are multiple constituencies and individuals who think that the *war position* isn't working.

b) I don't know anyone who thinks that withdrawal will "fix the problem" that is Iraq now, any more than paying for a broken figurine fixes it and returns it to an unbroken state.

c) we have plenty of expressions, many of them used in this thread, to explain just what has happened in Iraq but I'll try a few more of them:

"You can't unshit the bed"
"humpty dumpty"
"no use crying over spilled milk."

But let me put this to you in words of one syllable. I'm for withdrawal from Iraq because

a) we've already lost the war
b) we are destroying our soldiers (individually), our military (collectively), our civil rights and civil society (under the Bush regime) *and also* the Iraqi people through our incompetence.

withdrawal won't fix the situation in Iraq. And it won't restore our honor as a people. We threw that away when we bombed a civilian population for no reason and with little public outcry.

Americans have a really hard time coming to grips with the fact that there is no "reset button" on our honor. That the dead in Iraq will be just as dead, and their relatives will curse us, until the end of time. WE can't make it up to them. And continuing to pretend that we can is not just another sign of childish american exceptionalism its really, really, insultingly sick.

The british pulled out of India and a bloodbath ensued. Should they have stayed? Would they have prevented that bloodbath? We'll never know. Historians know, however, that it was british policies that created the impetus for the bloodbath and laid the groundwork. The same is true for us in Iraq. Our actions in Iraq made this bloodbath inevitable and unleashed hell on the Iraqis. There's nothign we can do now to mitigate that pain and throwing more of our own soldiers down the well won't do it.

Well, boilerman10 up above said it pretty clearly too--there isn't going to be a "peace with honor"--we threw that away. There will only be peace (for some) and death and dishonor for others.

Stop trying to spend other people's blood and treasure trying to clean up the mess that the Bush administration has made. It can't be done. And it isn't up to you to do it.

aimai

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OK. But if we commit to endless war because we fear the consequences of leaving, will you, Adele Stan, please be the one to tell America that this is the new reason for the war? We are not there to spread democracy. We are not there to defeat al Qaeda. We are not there to prevent the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud. We are there because we don't know how to leave.
And as you explain that to people in our country, would you project forward to next Memorial Day, when a thousand or so soldiers who are alive today are then mourned? What will you tell the parents and children and spouses of those who die between today and Memorial Day, 08? All you'll be able to say is, they didn't die to protect us, and they didn't die for a mission, but they died because we didn't know how to leave. Fine. Go ahead and say that, but don't fool yourself. That's not the Pottery Barn rule. That's something else entirely.

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall."

And if you have any brains in your head at all, like GB1, don't go knocking Humpty Dumpty off that wall. He might just be that "rough man on the wall with a gun" that allowed most Iraqis to "sleep peacefully in their beds at night".

Wingnuts love to quote that and attribute it to Orwell, but Orwell never wrote or said it. He did make some statements along those lines in other essays, but that's straight out of Jack Nicholson's mouth and (arch-liberal) Aaron Sorkin's mind.

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The medical system, and everything else, is not going to get repaired, as long as we're there. We are the catalyst that gets $%#& blown up.

I think the point is that there's no good answer here - if we stay, things get worse; if we leave, things get worse. We want, I think, to draw some distinction that will make one seem not as bad as the other, and use that as our sign post, but it seems pretty clear both options are bad.

We probably have to get out. There's no real way for us to stay and make things any better, our soldiers will simply be in a position to be the problem, not the solution, and America is not prepared to watch a civil war in which we are in the middle (and probably getting slaughtered). But I don't think we should pretend that leaving will look any better. It will simply be a civil war without us being there. It's why think so much of what has been brought up is actually all true (esp roger, aimai, and adele), and doesn't even necessarily conflict, except in the fact that we have a choice to stay or go. The net effect of doing either is damaging results. It's not that we "lost a war" - it's that this was never a war in the sense Americans like to define conflict, a simplistic notion of good guys and bad guys and clear winners and losers. We failed to change Iraq (because I think, we didn't understand what we were trying to do and had no clear plan for doing it), and now we will have to live with the consequences. We can live with it by staying there, or we can live with it by watching from a distance. It's all awful. That's what we face. I think we will leave, and soon. I'm just not planning to pretend that the decision means something good will come of it. The good choice here was not to get involved in the first place, and that's the one we can't undo.

On the subject of reparations, who do you think you are going to pay reparations to? Sadr? Sistani? Maliki? The Kurds? Or maybe whatever strongman eventually emerges at the end of the post-withdrawal bloodbath?

Put another way, if the reparations get used by the ruling group to crush all opposing groups by force, in what way are we serving morality by providing them?

I don't think those proposing reparations have quite absorbed the enormity of what we have done. There's no unified "Iraq" for us to make amends with, even if we wanted to. In any case, the crime of our invasion is now intermixed with all the other crimes of all the other lunatics who we unleashed. You can't tease our culpability out and fix that, and there's no way on the world for us to fix the problem as a whole. Nor can we make recompense for what we've done. Certainly not with reparations, a salve to our consciences, but not much else.

And we're not there because we don't know how to get out. We're there for oil. And we're ginning up to get Iran's oil, too. The bloodthirsty and oilthirsty bastards in charge need to be impeached, and impeached now.

---"We've broken it. We have an obligation to try to fix it."

Adele, HOW many times does Carl Levin have to say there is NO military solution for Iraq before you get it dear?

US military isn't establishing peace by staying, and yes, peace certainly may not following a US withdraw either so what are we to do?

In the end the Iraqi people will either take a stand for peace or they will not, but either way, at this point in time, the American military sure isn't provide any from of security or peace in Iraq either.

Iran may take over Iraq, but at least it would be some form of government, and right now the Iraqi have no form of working government at all.

It's seems that cleric Muqtada al-Sadr maybe the guy who will get control of Iraq, since he told his followers not to attack Iraqis, no matter what tribe they belong to, Sunnis and Shiites, no he just wants so attack Americans.

Terrible I know, but I see no reason to give him more American cannon fodder. These people in Iraq know how to take themselve and they don't need our baby-sitting AND we are hardly saving anyone by staying there.

Bush may tell you alot of shit but you already know what the truth is.

Two points, Adele:

First, the analogy you offer between 1980s Afghanistan and todays' Iraq is terribly flawed. We did not occupy Afghanistan, so it is a false equivalency to say that we "abandoned" the Afghans in the same way leaving Iraq would be "abandoning" the Iraqis. The problem I have with your logic here is that it implies that our leaving of Iraq will trigger the collpase of the state and the fomenting of terror, a' la Afghanistan. The plain fact is that it was our invasion and occupation of Iraq that has created the failed state and terrorist haven that is today's Iraq. As in Iraq, Al Qaeda emerged in Afghanistan under foreign occupation, albeit Soviet, not American. It did not spring full-blown from the head of Zeus, so to speak, when the Soviets pulled out.

Secondly, it should be clear to anyone with any knowledge of the history of the region - and, indeed, the history of foreign occupations generally - that our continued presence as referees between the squabbling factions merely frees the Iraqis to concentrate on their own internal power struggles, rather than concentrating on building some kind of workable polity. Potential Iraqi leaders have virtually no incentive to take the reins while our armed forces are there attempting to keep the peace. Those who cooperate with us will be - and already have been - branded as traitors. As for the rest, our troops serve as a convenient target for the frustration of Iraqis at the current situation. People like al-Sadr realize this - we "energize their base," so to speak, giving them a theme and a target for their demagoguery. Since we wield the real power there, that absolves al-Sadr and other Iraqi politicians from actually taking concrete steps to improve the situation. If the people of Iraq see us in the role of 800-pound gorilla, they are much more willing to give their leaders a pass for doing little to improve the security situation because they naturally assume that indigenous forces are largely helpless to make any real difference.

The only logical solution is to set a concrete timetable for withdrawal now, and stick to it. Force the hands of those who hold political influence among the Iraqi populace to come up with a plan for running the country in our absence. Will the aftermath of our withdrawal be bloody and chaotic? Yes, but certainly no moreso than now. We no longer have the power (if we ever did) to change that reality. Those who believe we do are living a fantasy and, frankly, have lost any credibility they may once have had to recommend policy options. It is long past time we left a situation in which we have done far more harm than good, and in which our potential for making a positive impact is nil.

Ah! "Rebuilding the medical system" -- right, we are really great at it. In general, reconstruction of civil society is something that contemporary America is so excellent at it: need only cast one glance at the thriving city of New Orleans.

Seriously, Adele, you are misunderstanding the criticism, and your digs at the "peace position" don't do you much good: there is no "pacifist" enthusiasm for withdrawal -- it's just a minimal step. What's been going on and still goes on is a crime. To stop committing crimes is no "solution": still, it's much better than the alternative.

The most benign view of the "Pottery Barn rule" assumes that you desire to make amends for errors, have an executive with the ability and wisdom to do the right thing, and have forces that are equipped to address the tasks that must be completed. Under the Bush administration there is no desire to make amends for the errors. The failures of this executive are obvious. The armed forces are ill suited to truly "build a nation." There is nothing that can be constructively accomplished by the USA (in any official capacity, in any endeavor) before January 2009.

The good news is that enlightened nations do not seek to see the Middle East continue to degrade. A Democratic president is likely to find that he or she will have considerable help cleaning up GW Bush's mess. After January 2009, almost anything is possible.

Adele:

I, too think ....that we invaded and we cannot leave until we fix it. And I really believed this.

Still do but reality sucks doesn't it.

At the very least, we have an obligation to repair the medical system before we leave. And to make sure that people can get food. And to pay attention to the current dynamics, like in Anbar province where, Spencer Ackerman reports, the native Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda.

I'm going to go with Atrios on this one: the choice is not between what we have now and some mythical pony plan that you can dream up. The Bush administration will never put things right. And no Democratic administration, other than perhaps Kucinich will put these things right, either. Moral, liberal pundits do not run politics in this country, and it shows: When our military leaves, it leaves the rubble in place. When America invades, the government doesn't pay reparations, and it sure as hell does not set up a medical system, or do anything else nice for the people who have suffered the "benefits" of U.S. Army work.

Adele, this is a breathless bit of cluelessness, I must say:

"There's another choice that no one dares to consider: doing things differently."

Ah, but you have dared. Dared beyond what the silly so called peace activist never dreamed. Do things diffently! Wow. This is a sheer Einstein moment. I propose that we all stamp our feet. That will show them!

So, here's two small question for this daring, wonderful plan that nobody has ever consdered: who is the "we" that is going to do things differently? and what things are going to be done differently? The point being that your daring plan has only one fault: it is completely vacuous.

America doesn't exist as and wasn't organized as a charity association - everything America does trails American self interest. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is wrong to pretend that isn't the case. The "things" that could be done differently are going to be done differently by Americans, who will have the same self interest in making sure that Iraq's interest is subordinated to ours. For instance, Iraq did have a medical system, set up under the Baath party up to and including Saddam, that was as good as any in the Middle East. It was state dependent. The sanctions really ate into it. So when the Americans came, what did they do? They tried to disentangle all activities from the state. And they refused to provide security. So that, outside a few show hospitals, medical care went down not up. And given the precarious security situation, by 2006, the professional class got fed up and and started to leave.

Now, let's take your daring plan. How are we supposed to do things differently? Put American doctors in place to kick out the remaining Iraqi doctors? Supply security for hospitals when the American troops are so overstretched that, basically, they secure themselves? Put aid money into medical infrastructure, and end up with hospitals like the Laura Bush monument in Basra, which became a monument to Bechtel (paid 100 million dollars over its original bid, and withdrawing before the hospital was finished), and the kind of mindlessness embodies in posts like yours about Iraq. Perhaps before you announced your mindblowing scientific discovery that we should be doing things different, you should read up on, say, what has been done by the Americans vis a vis the medical system in Iraq. This is a new york times piece about the Basra hospital - although I sure hope new data to spoil your scientific breakthrough, which depends on having a perfect lack of information.

Anyway, I do believe you should be congratulated for achieving the most meaningless response so far to the collapse of the Democratic opposition last week. That's quite an achievement. Now I think you should aim your brilliant policy powers to other problems. Hey, pollution? the solution is - do things differently. World hunger? Unfortunately, people haven't even dared to come up with the solution of - do things differently. Health care in the U.S. Oh man, the cowards who have cluttered up the airwaves and print with bogus talk, when obviously we simply have to do things differently.

It must be frightening to be among the most daring people of your generation, but you will go far, I think.

ps - I don't know why the post (hopefully) above this one says anonymous. I wrote it.

I think aimai probably summed it up as well as anyone. There is simply no good result that is going to come from this foolish war. There will be a reckoning within Iraq in which the issue of power is finally resolved, most likely with a substantial amount of bloodshed. This is going to happen (as it has been happening) whether we are there or not. Perhaps we can keep the lid on it to some small degree for a time, but in the end this issue of power will have to be resolved.

The U.S. cannot impose a decent solution on the Iraqis. We are also bleeding our armed forces and our treasury simply to avoid facing up to the tragic consequences of our folly and arrogance. This cannot and should not go on indefinitely. We should begin drawing down now and do so with relative haste.

Perhaps a small force can remain in Kuridstan to be available in the event of failed state scenario in part of Iraq where terrorist could take advantage of the void, much as they did in Afghanistan. But beyond that, I don't see us having much to offer to the Iraqis.

It's an adult reality that most of us learn in life -- there are things that are irretrievably broken. And that's why you don't elect a shallow, callow faux cowboy to run the most powerful nation on earth.

I am floored by Ms. Stan's post and angered by her comment.

You've missed it all Ms. Stan.

When promotion for this war began (the infamous don't roll out a new product in August remark)many of us, with no public platform, the uncredentialed, faceless rabble who are routinely dismissed (as Ms. Stan did in her comment)were stunned that anyone would believe that Iraq could possibly be a threat. Many of us knew that invading Iraq would be opening Pandora's Box and would be the biggest foreign policy blunder in our history. Biggest foreign policy blunder because there were only bad outcomes possible including the worst case scenario of regional conflagration.

The Iraq War revealed still more evidence of OUR decline. A part of that decline is the decay of our public intellectuals.

Step forward Ms. Stan this is where you come in.

Along with people like Beinert and Pollack and too many others who actually supported the war, we now have other "liberals" who just don't get it. Very embarrassing at best.

You don't seem to get that as matters stand today in Iraq OUR PRESENCE is a huge part of the problem.

Iraqis don't see "their" government as "their" government as long as we are there.

As long as we are there the rest of the world will push back and we can expect that push back to increase in intensity.

The civil warS will have no chance to either reach a conclusion or burn out as long as we are there.

As long as we are there our presence energizes the conflict.

We can't stay there and fix anything.

Every day we remain in Iraq WE become more materially and morally weakened as a nation.

Whatever the outcome in Iraq, whether it breaks into three weak states in some form of federation or is partially united as an Islamic nation and a client of Iran or a strong man emerges to re-establish sovereignty, whatever; we will owe Iraq reparations for destoying their nation.

Whether we honor that obligation may well determine our outcome as a nation.

None of this can START until we leave. The turmoil will continue if we stay.

Oh, by the way Ms. Stan, you needed Spencer Ackerman to tell you that Sunni Baathists are starting to bump off al Qaeda. Predictable and predicted.

Ms. Stan you might want to try a little empathy.

I think some of you need to take a few deep breaths. Your hatred of the idiot-in-chief seems like it's making it far too easy for you to condemn hundreds of thousands (more) Iraqis to death, as that's the likely consequence of the full-scale civil war that would break out if we left -- I think it would make what's happening now pale in comparison.

The question isn't whether we can fix everything before we leave, I think. The question is can we at least make it so that if we leave, the entire country doesn't descend into complete and utter chaos. Believe what you want -- it isn't *complete* and *utter* chaos at the moment, it's merely pretty damn bad.

To cal1942: You are faceless because you choose facelessness. Hence your use of a handle rather than your name as a signatory to your post. Reminder, unlike Beinert, et al, I always opposed this war.

To aimai: Yes, the Brits in India is a tragedy that I have contemplated as I imagine a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. No, the Brits should not have stayed indefinitely, but they should have given the job of partition to someone who had actually been to India before he drew the line on the map. They also should not have caved into Jinnah. They got out without a plan because of domestic political pressure. The result was 2 million dead in the immediate aftermath (estimates vary), and two bitter enemies with nuclear weapons pointed at each other. Well, that went well.

I don't know the answer, but I do think that real, regional peace talks need to be convened. An international peacekeeping force needs to be imagined, even if its deployment is not an immediate possibility. A rebuilding scheme that uses Iraqi talent instead of Bechtel's needs to be put together, and negotiations between parties over what it would take to embark on recovery should be proposed. Chances of any of this working may be less than great, but we need to try. And please, folks, check out the Ira Glass mentioned in the post.

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"You break it, you bought it."

Which means: Give the cashier your money and just leave. The store personnel will sweep up the pieces and toss them in the trash.

If you're going to use an analogy, don't use just half of it. Work it through to its logical result.

Ms. Stan:

I am afraid that your original idea was a very bad one - the best thing we can do for the Iraqis is to leave, in an orderly manner. We can discuss reparations with the Iraqi factions and with the neighboring countries once we leave.

Iraq cannot begin to rebuild until we leave. Just as many proclaimed dire consequences for our leaving Vietnam, you are proclaiming dire consequences for our leaving Iraq. The dire consequences didn't happen in Vietnam.

I would propose that we talk with Iraq's neighbors and with the Iraqi factions to work out a schedule for withdrawal of American troops, with possible replacement with a Pan-Muslim peacekeeping force to facilitate the transition. Once we are out of there _then_ we can talk about reparations.

Adele's replies go from bad to worse. The whole point of the benchmark scheme just scotched by the Democrats was to plan for the withdrawal. Let's say that slowly. Plan. For. The. Withdrawal. Now, if you plan on no withdrawal, you get either: no withdrawal, or an unplanned one. I believe that the reality in Iraq is that withdrawal is inevitable. It might not even be possible to do the Hillary option, and leave 40 or so thousand soldiers in Iraq to help us in attacking Iran for our next glorious war. It might be that retro colonialism in the Middle East is over.

So, let's talk about "imagining" things. Let's imagine, for instance, a refugee situation. There are 2 million Iraqi refugees. This is something we can imagine doing something about. We could give billions to the Syrians and Jordanians and Iranians so that they can cope with that stress. So, Adele, are you supportive of putting an aid package together for Syria and Iran? Who do you imagine is going to sponsor it. When do you imagine it will pass? Right before, or right after hell freezes over?

If you can't imagine the real constraints on the American use of power, you can't imagine policy at all - you can only fantasize. Fantasy is great, too - it allows you to take the moral high ground and criticize those peace people who are cruelly overlooking the Iraqis being killed. That your suggestions will a, support the continued killing, while b, putting window dressing on it by dreaming up deus ex machina solutions is, of course, not even part of the moral equation. All good intentions, all bad results = happy face liberalism. Wonderful.
Now, perhaps if you really start thinking about the Iraqi situation, you could think about how we could pressure the Democratic party to stand up and come through with a withdrawal plan that opposes drift, that recognizes the need for reconciliation among differing factions in Iraq even if those factions hate the US, that discourages the use of sectarian instruments in the maintaining of an occupation (the creation of Wolf brigades, the use of Kurdish or Shi'ite soldiers in Sunni areas and vice versa), the refusal of the Americans to engage constructively with Sadr, the refusal of the Americans to countenance building economic structures that would be run by the state (re a Washington Post story of two weeks ago and Bremer's own story in the post that dismissed any economic reconstruction not aimed at privatization). Perhaps you should think about the consequences of shutting down media in Iraq when it isn't to the government/American embassy's taste, or the use of the court system as an adjunct of the executive system, ie kangaroo courts. You could think of getting the mercenaries, thought to number 40,000, either out of Iraq or under strict control of the army. Concrete actions that would actually diminish the violence. But why do that when you can imagine wondrous peace troops streaming in from around the world - a coalition of the willing?

ps - interesting contrast in the Tapped posts on Iraq. On the one hand, concrete and rather easy action by the Dems is scotched, and, as Klein says, what else could we do? On the other hand, vigorous imaginary action is advocated by Stan, as, for example, international peace troops. Sorta the Dem campaign policy: we promise not to do anything we can do, but we will definitely advocate doing things we can't do - to make you feel better.
Wow. What an intellectual debacle.

I don't know the answer, but I do think that real, regional peace talks need to be convened. An international peacekeeping force needs to be imagined, even if its deployment is not an immediate possibility.

So who is going to engage in these negociations? The Bush Administration? Sure and I can create gold from lead. As Atrios points out, for the next 20 months we have to deal with an administration whose incompetence in unparalleled. Hoping they will turn things around now is mere wishful thinking.

"Ms. Stan you might want to try a little empathy."

Are you shitting me?

I think it's amazing how many foreign policy experts we have posting here, who know for a fact that the best thing we can do for the Iraqis is leave.

I've read and heard interviews with folks on the ground in Iraq, non-administration non-military contractor folks there to help out the best they can, that insist that if we pulled out the entire country would plunge into a *FULL* scale civil war/bloodbath. Their opinion is that while staying causing a host of problems, a full-scale pull out isn't the solution either. (Wish I could give you some links, but the info is out there, and their conclusions hardly seem unreasonable.)

Atrios is probably right -- the choice isn't between Bush's war, the ideal war, and pulling out, it's between #1 and #3, and #3 has to be better than #1. On the other hand, my understanding of General Patraeus is that he's trying to run things in a vastly different way than his predecessors.

I guess the problem that I have, and that perhaps Adele is having, is that pulling out now may condemn hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to death -- staying in there for 20 more months, plus a couple of years under a theoretically sane Democrat president, might be painful in the short term but be much more positive in the long term.

A long shot? Absolutely -- but the main counterargument I see above:

1) Bush sucks.
2) You can't unshit the bed.
3) Let's leave, the Iraqis have to get around to killing each other eventually anyway

-- seems a bit callous.

If a sane adminstration were taking over now, instead of 20 months from now, I think it would be obvious we need to stick around and try things differently. And I admit that 20 more months of Bush's war may be so ruinous that there WILL be nothing we can do except leave and let the Iraqis get around to killing each other. Bleah.

Adele writes: "At the very least, we have an obligation to repair the medical system before we leave."

We can't. They wouldn't let us if we tried.

"And to make sure that people can get food."

We can't. They wouldn't let us if we tried.

"And to pay attention to the current dynamics, like in Anbar province where, Spencer Ackerman reports, the native Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda."

That doesn't mean they like US, Adele!

Forrester, this is interesting:

The group blog of The American Prospect

Ğ | Main | ğ

IF WE LEAVE IRAQ, THEN WHAT? It's a question I've been pondering a lot lately. I know that entertaining doubts about the wisdom of an unequivocal troop pull-out leaves me vulnerable to the ire of the left and the disdain of even some fellow liberals, but these doubts do gnaw at me, as doubts are wont to do.

As well-meaning people scream for an immediate withdrawal, I keep thinking of another Muslim country the U.S. helped break, and then turned away from, leaving behind nothing but a pile of rubble and portable military hardware in the hands of rival ethnic groups. The ethnic groups -- one predominately Shi'ite, and two from opposing schools of Sunni Islam -- turned the Stinger missiles, shells and automatic rifles on each other until the one with the most draconian view of the faith won (more or less) and installed a theocracy (with the support of many of the people, who just wanted order and an end to war). The vacuum left by the U.S. abandonment of the people of Afghanistan, after having armed its warlords to the teeth to serve as our proxies in their war against the Soviet Union, was ultimately filled by al Qaeda, which found the Taliban's Afghanistan a most accommodating landscape from which to launch a global insurgency of terror against the West.

I was against this war on Iraq from the beginning. So nauseated was I by former Secretary of State Colin Powell's "good soldier" act in the lead-up to this dreadful conflict that I am loath to quote with appreciation virtually anything that the man said, but I do think he got this right about Iraq: "You break it, you bought it." We've broken it. We have an obligation to try to fix it.

My comments here are spurred, in part, by this weekend's remarkable edition (starting Monday, available as free mp3 until June 4) of "This American Life," the Chicago Public Radio show hosted by Ira Glass, who asked whether or not some sort of moral obligation follows the U.S. invasion. I think, yes. Do I know how to fix it? No.

Tomorrow, Memorial Day, belongs to the warriors who died for the causes claimed by our leaders, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere (including our own soil). Let the days that follow belong to the living -- the wars' survivors, soldier and civilian -- and a plan that equals our professed belief in ourselves as a just and noble people. Call it a matter of enlightened self-interest.

--Adele M. Stan

Posted by Adele M. Stan on May 27, 2007 05:57 PM | Permalink

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COMMENTS (50)

Adele, if I thought there were some way we could fix the situation in Iraq, I might not support withdrawal. As it stands, healing the sectarian rifts seems to be entirely outside the power of the American military or any other foreign military. So there's nothing we can do to fix the biggest problem afflicting the country.

What do you do if you made a promise to help someone, but there's nothing effective you can do to help them? That's basically where we stand now.

The funny thing about the Pottery Barn analogy is that if you break something, you can totally fix the situation and make everyone happy by paying for it. But Iraq isn't like that. All the king's horses and all the king's money won't put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | May 27, 2007 06:25 PM

The pottery barn principle is, to put it simply: INSANE. Rather the analogy should be: you splashed paint on this Van Gogh masterpiece, so now you have to paint another one.
The point being - the moral question begs the question of qualifications. The U.S. is simply and wholly unqualified to 'fix" Iraq. Has three years of occupation not driven that lesson home, Adele? I am amazed that something so simple seems to be so hard to see. Nations exist as a compound of moral yearning and hard self interest, plus ethnicities, cultural patterns, languages, past paths, etc. They are masterpieces, not bits of assembly stamped pottery. Even when they are dysfunctional they are masterpieces.

A narrow set of goals with a check on American power was, from the beginning, the only hope for the Americans to be 'helpful' in Iraq. The Americans refused that check, tried to aggrandize the power to themselves, tried to actually delegate the Iraqis who would have the power, and failed miserably. Now their very presence is an attack on the legitimacy of the government, insofar as the government can't even institute simple things - like, please don't build that wall in Baghdad. By making the government seem powerless, by attending to America's interests - the oil bill - and using the supposed 'democracy ' as merely window dressing to get what we want, and by using reconstruction projects as American goldbricking projects, we've pretty much shot the wad as far as morality is concerned.
Redemption can come from planning - that is planning - did I say planning? - a non-chaotic withdrawal. That requires benchmarks that work, and a flexible timetable. Drift and rhetoric are not evidences of a superior moral sensibility, but of moral paralysis.

Posted by: roger | May 27, 2007 06:27 PM

Afghanistan in the Nineties is a poor analogy. We didn't invade Afghanistan, occupy it for several years, then withdraw militarily. We supplied arms to Afghan resistance against the Soviets, then turned our backs after the USSR withdrew.

There is no reason that we cannot aid the Iraqi people after we withdraw militarily.

Posted by: Clark | May 27, 2007 06:52 PM

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Posted by: Scott | May 27, 2007 07:22 PM

You're sort of right, I think, but let me explain where I take issue with this.

The pottery barn principle should be re-stated: before you break it, you'd better be sure you *can* buy it.

George Bush and his pals didn't do due diligence to be sure we could afford Iraq before they broke it. In fact, to the extent they did their homework, it clearly showed what we all now know: we can't afford Iraq.

We've already failed the pottery barn principle as I've revised it. What can we do to fix things in the face of clear evidence we can fix nothing? Well, nothing. We can either keep breaking Iraq into more and more little pieces, hurting more and more people there and in our own army, or we can go home and let them -- a sovereign nation once more -- try to sort things out for themselves with whatever help we can provide.

The problem with the pottery barn principle is, basically, what happened in Iraq: sometimes there's just nothing you can do. And it's foolish to keep trying.

Posted by: Mike Meginnis | May 27, 2007 07:29 PM

Dear Ms. Stan: Your sentiments are admirable. But if we don't know what to do, and we don't, then the course of action that causes the least harm to all parties is to stop doing anything and leave the premises.
It's a civil war. We can either pick sides, which has its own set of moral hazards, or bail. Bailing isn't a positive good, but at least we will no longer be in process of destroying our own military as a combat force.

Posted by: JMG | May 27, 2007 07:35 PM

If you break something at the Pottery Barn, you don't move into the store for three years and tell them how to restock it.

Posted by: Total | May 27, 2007 07:50 PM

I think the pottery barn analogy is another of the signs that people in the run up to the war had simply lost their minds. It never made any sense, and yet we were all told it did make sense. And people like Adele stan still buy it.

Here's the way I put it to people who tell me "but its the pottery barn rule." The pottery barn rule is that "you break it you bought it." For instance: if you break a mirror in a store you have to pay for it--but you can't bring it home with you and use it like a mirror because its *&^% broken and it can't be used that way.

That's one way in which the phrse is inapt. Others on the post have shown many other ways in which the phrsae just doesn't hold up as a guidline to what we should do in iraq. But it seems to have done its job simply distracting people from what was really going on.

We didn't go into a store and break a thing--we broke intoa *country* and killed a huge number of people, destroyed a functioning government, installed a non-functioning government, demanded that they pass a bunch of laws to their own detriment, attempted to force them to sign over their property (the oil law) to us, tortured and killed their people, bombed their hospitals, closed their universities, opened their borders to their historic enemies and--oh yeah!--wanted to be thanked for it.

I don't think any single phrase could sum up the absurdity and the arrogance of thinking that anything short of a century or two of monetary reparations could make up for what we've done. but come to think of it, that is the *real* pottery barn rule. You break it *you pay for it.* You don't own the whole damn store.

aimai

Posted by: aimai | May 27, 2007 08:31 PM

There is no evidence to suggest we CAN fix it, and no amount of guilt over our responsbility for breaking it can change that.

Posted by: tdraicer | May 27, 2007 08:36 PM

Aimai, I echo those sentiments completely.

Posted by: roger | May 27, 2007 08:43 PM

"We have an obligation to try to fix it"

We have tried. To the tune of several years, billions of dollars, and thousands of American lives.

Perhaps you've been watching Food Network since 2003?

We can't fix it. Nobody can fix it except the Iraqis themselves, and how bloody that will be is entirely up to them.

Posted by: Jon H | May 27, 2007 11:25 PM

I would add, that about all we can do is acknowledge our fault in making the mess, and we can pay reparations.

We should probably set conditions on what kind of reparations and what kind of Iraqi society we'll pay them to.

When Iraq becomes that kind of society, we'll pay up, with interest. But while they're a bunch of genocidal theocratic ratfuckers, we won't pay a dime more.

Posted by: Jon H | May 27, 2007 11:29 PM

The U.S. does have responsibility for what is and will happen in Iraq. Unfortunately, there are only bad choices, and one must choose the least worse option. Our continued presence is doing more harm than good.

To use a Pottery Barn type analogy: you go into a store and break something, offer to pay for it and clean it up and then keep breaking things as you try to clean up your last mess -- at some point the best option from the storeowner's perspective is that you just leave and let her try to clean it up herself.

Posted by: Ben Brackley | May 27, 2007 11:49 PM

Adele: The Pottery Barn analogy is pure American arrogance. First off, all you did was smash it. You may think that as a result you now own it, but you haven't paid a cent for it. Ask the Iraqis.

The money Congress just authorized? That's just to pay for more smashing. Like last week's Blackwater rampages.

As for your "anti-war" party, Kucinich was the only Democratic candidate with the balls to reject the "oil-law" benchmark as attempted theft of Iraq's only natural resource by the U.S. oil barons who drummed up the war in the first place.

The Iraqis overwhelmingly want you out. Drop the crocodile tears, and get the f--- out.

Posted by: A Canadian observer | May 28, 2007 03:36 AM

It seems to me that most commenters have based their reasoning on a set of false choices. The choice is not simply between doing things as they've always been done since the Iraq invasion -- torturing, profiteering, etc. -- and getting out. There's another choice that no one dares to consider: doing things differently.

Honestly, I think the notion that withdrawal is the "peace position" is every bit as arrogant as the meglomania that got us into this situation. Peace for whom?

At the very least, we have an obligation to repair the medical system before we leave. And to make sure that people can get food. And to pay attention to the current dynamics, like in Anbar province where, Spencer Ackerman reports, the native Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda.

I'm not for this war. But to leave things as they are now is irresponsible and selfish in the short term, and an invitation to annihilation -- via a much broader, multinational conflict -- in the long term.

Posted by: Adele M. Stan | May 28, 2007 06:40 AM

Ms. Stan,

As we move towards a the eventual end of the Iraq fiasco, let us not fall into Vietnam type paranoia. Iraq must be handled in a way that allows for troop drawdown, and for a sharp increase in diplomatic efforts to start a serious rebuilding. Albert Speer-esque "Embassies" are not included.

The only winners have been the Mullahs Ms. Stan, and without them there will be no peace in Iraq. This was seen as early as 2002, as the only possible outcome, the ONLY possible outcome! Now you shudder at the prospect?

Ending the hostilities will open the door to the blowback that has been foretold for 5 years. You are suddenly worried about this?! What stuff is this?

Prolonging this gruesome occupation does not serve anyone save the homocidal madness of the Neo-Con cabal. Ending this gory bloodfest abruptly creates a power vacuum likely to sweep in who-knows-what. But not ending this disasterous occupation merely prolongs the agony of all sides.

Fixing the medical system? With what and how? We can't fix our own system. If you think the international community has any stomach to clean up after Bush's mistakes without assurances that Bush and his grisly gang will be held accountable for this enormity, you are dreaming.

We are stuck in a horrible position. Staying prolongs the bloodshed. Leaving opens the door to lunacy. But, a cessation of aggressive military action and conversion to rebuilding may find further difficulty as we are hated outsiders in the eyes of the Iraqis: we are the Abu Ghraib torturers, the "criminals" who shot down families trying to escape Fallujah, the killers of children, and family people who couldn't understand English anymore than our troops understand Arabic. We have seen them lying dead in the streets, torn in two by indiscriminate aerial bombardment, torn to shreds and being carried by grieving loved ones, dead.

And now we have to listen to revived, revised "peace with honor" schemes?

End hostilities, start an immediate diplomatic offensive in the entire region, get as much help from the international community as we can, consult with and pay respects to the Mullahs, carefully draw down troops, Start rebuilding as possible, and in order to make this work, we may have to bring Bush, Cheney, and the neo-con cabal along with most supporting administration officials to justice at The Hague in order to demonstrate to the world that we are sincere about needing assistance to rebuild Iraq, and ending the imperial phantasmagoria of a homocidal clique of ideologues.

Posted by: boilerman10 | May 28, 2007 08:23 AM

MS. Stan,
I'm sick and tired of hearing the "peace position" characatured as somehow as bad, illogical and ultimately isolationist as the war position was.

a) There is no "peace position" there are multiple constituencies and individuals who think that the *war position* isn't working.

b) I don't know anyone who thinks that withdrawal will "fix the problem" that is Iraq now, any more than paying for a broken figurine fixes it and returns it to an unbroken state.

c) we have plenty of expressions, many of them used in this thread, to explain just what has happened in Iraq but I'll try a few more of them:

"You can't unshit the bed"
"humpty dumpty"
"no use crying over spilled milk."

But let me put this to you in words of one syllable. I'm for withdrawal from Iraq because

a) we've already lost the war
b) we are destroying our soldiers (individually), our military (collectively), our civil rights and civil society (under the Bush regime) *and also* the Iraqi people through our incompetence.

withdrawal won't fix the situation in Iraq. And it won't restore our honor as a people. We threw that away when we bombed a civilian population for no reason and with little public outcry.

Americans have a really hard time coming to grips with the fact that there is no "reset button" on our honor. That the dead in Iraq will be just as dead, and their relatives will curse us, until the end of time. WE can't make it up to them. And continuing to pretend that we can is not just another sign of childish american exceptionalism its really, really, insultingly sick.

The british pulled out of India and a bloodbath ensued. Should they have stayed? Would they have prevented that bloodbath? We'll never know. Historians know, however, that it was british policies that created the impetus for the bloodbath and laid the groundwork. The same is true for us in Iraq. Our actions in Iraq made this bloodbath inevitable and unleashed hell on the Iraqis. There's nothign we can do now to mitigate that pain and throwing more of our own soldiers down the well won't do it.

Well, boilerman10 up above said it pretty clearly too--there isn't going to be a "peace with honor"--we threw that away. There will only be peace (for some) and death and dishonor for others.

Stop trying to spend other people's blood and treasure trying to clean up the mess that the Bush administration has made. It can't be done. And it isn't up to you to do it.

aimai

Posted by: aimai | May 28, 2007 08:44 AM

m781k

Posted by: ro293ck | May 28, 2007 08:48 AM

m781k

Posted by: ro293ck | May 28, 2007 08:52 AM

m781k

Posted by: ro293ck | May 28, 2007 08:54 AM

OK. But if we commit to endless war because we fear the consequences of leaving, will you, Adele Stan, please be the one to tell America that this is the new reason for the war? We are not there to spread democracy. We are not there to defeat al Qaeda. We are not there to prevent the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud. We are there because we don't know how to leave.
And as you explain that to people in our country, would you project forward to next Memorial Day, when a thousand or so soldiers who are alive today are then mourned? What will you tell the parents and children and spouses of those who die between today and Memorial Day, 08? All you'll be able to say is, they didn't die to protect us, and they didn't die for a mission, but they died because we didn't know how to leave. Fine. Go ahead and say that, but don't fool yourself. That's not the Pottery Barn rule. That's something else entirely.

Posted by: winer | May 28, 2007 09:24 AM

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall."

And if you have any brains in your head at all, like GB1, don't go knocking Humpty Dumpty off that wall. He might just be that "rough man on the wall with a gun" that allowed most Iraqis to "sleep peacefully in their beds at night".

Wingnuts love to quote that and attribute it to Orwell, but Orwell never wrote or said it. He did make some statements along those lines in other essays, but that's straight out of Jack Nicholson's mouth and (arch-liberal) Aaron Sorkin's mind.

Posted by: LWM | May 28, 2007 11:02 AM

m160k

Posted by: ro41ck | May 28, 2007 11:06 AM

m160k

Posted by: ro41ck | May 28, 2007 11:09 AM

m160k

Posted by: ro41ck | May 28, 2007 11:11 AM

The medical system, and everything else, is not going to get repaired, as long as we're there. We are the catalyst that gets $%#& blown up.

Posted by: Charon | May 28, 2007 11:29 AM

I think the point is that there's no good answer here - if we stay, things get worse; if we leave, things get worse. We want, I think, to draw some distinction that will make one seem not as bad as the other, and use that as our sign post, but it seems pretty clear both options are bad.

We probably have to get out. There's no real way for us to stay and make things any better, our soldiers will simply be in a position to be the problem, not the solution, and America is not prepared to watch a civil war in which we are in the middle (and probably getting slaughtered). But I don't think we should pretend that leaving will look any better. It will simply be a civil war without us being there. It's why think so much of what has been brought up is actually all true (esp roger, aimai, and adele), and doesn't even necessarily conflict, except in the fact that we have a choice to stay or go. The net effect of doing either is damaging results. It's not that we "lost a war" - it's that this was never a war in the sense Americans like to define conflict, a simplistic notion of good guys and bad guys and clear winners and losers. We failed to change Iraq (because I think, we didn't understand what we were trying to do and had no clear plan for doing it), and now we will have to live with the consequences. We can live with it by staying there, or we can live with it by watching from a distance. It's all awful. That's what we face. I think we will leave, and soon. I'm just not planning to pretend that the decision means something good will come of it. The good choice here was not to get involved in the first place, and that's the one we can't undo.

Posted by: weboy | May 28, 2007 11:39 AM

On the subject of reparations, who do you think you are going to pay reparations to? Sadr? Sistani? Maliki? The Kurds? Or maybe whatever strongman eventually emerges at the end of the post-withdrawal bloodbath?

Put another way, if the reparations get used by the ruling group to crush all opposing groups by force, in what way are we serving morality by providing them?

I don't think those proposing reparations have quite absorbed the enormity of what we have done. There's no unified "Iraq" for us to make amends with, even if we wanted to. In any case, the crime of our invasion is now intermixed with all the other crimes of all the other lunatics who we unleashed. You can't tease our culpability out and fix that, and there's no way on the world for us to fix the problem as a whole. Nor can we make recompense for what we've done. Certainly not with reparations, a salve to our consciences, but not much else.

Posted by: jimBOB | May 28, 2007 11:41 AM

And we're not there because we don't know how to get out. We're there for oil. And we're ginning up to get Iran's oil, too. The bloodthirsty and oilthirsty bastards in charge need to be impeached, and impeached now.

Posted by: Charon | May 28, 2007 11:44 AM

---"We've broken it. We have an obligation to try to fix it."

Adele, HOW many times does Carl Levin have to say there is NO military solution for Iraq before you get it dear?

US military isn't establishing peace by staying, and yes, peace certainly may not following a US withdraw either so what are we to do?

In the end the Iraqi people will either take a stand for peace or they will not, but either way, at this point in time, the American military sure isn't provide any from of security or peace in Iraq either.

Iran may take over Iraq, but at least it would be some form of government, and right now the Iraqi have no form of working government at all.

It's seems that cleric Muqtada al-Sadr maybe the guy who will get control of Iraq, since he told his followers not to attack Iraqis, no matter what tribe they belong to, Sunnis and Shiites, no he just wants so attack Americans.

Terrible I know, but I see no reason to give him more American cannon fodder. These people in Iraq know how to take themselve and they don't need our baby-sitting AND we are hardly saving anyone by staying there.

Bush may tell you alot of shit but you already know what the truth is.

Posted by: Me_again | May 28, 2007 11:55 AM

Two points, Adele:

First, the analogy you offer between 1980s Afghanistan and todays' Iraq is terribly flawed. We did not occupy Afghanistan, so it is a false equivalency to say that we "abandoned" the Afghans in the same way leaving Iraq would be "abandoning" the Iraqis. The problem I have with your logic here is that it implies that our leaving of Iraq will trigger the collpase of the state and the fomenting of terror, a' la Afghanistan. The plain fact is that it was our invasion and occupation of Iraq that has created the failed state and terrorist haven that is today's Iraq. As in Iraq, Al Qaeda emerged in Afghanistan under foreign occupation, albeit Soviet, not American. It did not spring full-blown from the head of Zeus, so to speak, when the Soviets pulled out.

Secondly, it should be clear to anyone with any knowledge of the history of the region - and, indeed, the history of foreign occupations generally - that our continued presence as referees between the squabbling factions merely frees the Iraqis to concentrate on their own internal power struggles, rather than concentrating on building some kind of workable polity. Potential Iraqi leaders have virtually no incentive to take the reins while our armed forces are there attempting to keep the peace. Those who cooperate with us will be - and already have been - branded as traitors. As for the rest, our troops serve as a convenient target for the frustration of Iraqis at the current situation. People like al-Sadr realize this - we "energize their base," so to speak, giving them a theme and a target for their demagoguery. Since we wield the real power there, that absolves al-Sadr and other Iraqi politicians from actually taking concrete steps to improve the situation. If the people of Iraq see us in the role of 800-pound gorilla, they are much more willing to give their leaders a pass for doing little to improve the security situation because they naturally assume that indigenous forces are largely helpless to make any real difference.

The only logical solution is to set a concrete timetable for withdrawal now, and stick to it. Force the hands of those who hold political influence among the Iraqi populace to come up with a plan for running the country in our absence. Will the aftermath of our withdrawal be bloody and chaotic? Yes, but certainly no moreso than now. We no longer have the power (if we ever did) to change that reality. Those who believe we do are living a fantasy and, frankly, have lost any credibility they may once have had to recommend policy options. It is long past time we left a situation in which we have done far more harm than good, and in which our potential for making a positive impact is nil.

Posted by: jjcomet | May 28, 2007 11:55 AM

Ah! "Rebuilding the medical system" -- right, we are really great at it. In general, reconstruction of civil society is something that contemporary America is so excellent at it: need only cast one glance at the thriving city of New Orleans.

Seriously, Adele, you are misunderstanding the criticism, and your digs at the "peace position" don't do you much good: there is no "pacifist" enthusiasm for withdrawal -- it's just a minimal step. What's been going on and still goes on is a crime. To stop committing crimes is no "solution": still, it's much better than the alternative.

Posted by: Pierre | May 28, 2007 11:55 AM

The most benign view of the "Pottery Barn rule" assumes that you desire to make amends for errors, have an executive with the ability and wisdom to do the right thing, and have forces that are equipped to address the tasks that must be completed. Under the Bush administration there is no desire to make amends for the errors. The failures of this executive are obvious. The armed forces are ill suited to truly "build a nation." There is nothing that can be constructively accomplished by the USA (in any official capacity, in any endeavor) before January 2009.

The good news is that enlightened nations do not seek to see the Middle East continue to degrade. A Democratic president is likely to find that he or she will have considerable help cleaning up GW Bush's mess. After January 2009, almost anything is possible.

Posted by: rk | May 28, 2007 11:56 AM

Adele:

I, too think ....that we invaded and we cannot leave until we fix it. And I really believed this.

Still do but reality sucks doesn't it.

Posted by: Maddie In Florida | May 28, 2007 12:06 PM

At the very least, we have an obligation to repair the medical system before we leave. And to make sure that people can get food. And to pay attention to the current dynamics, like in Anbar province where, Spencer Ackerman reports, the native Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda.

I'm going to go with Atrios on this one: the choice is not between what we have now and some mythical pony plan that you can dream up. The Bush administration will never put things right. And no Democratic administration, other than perhaps Kucinich will put these things right, either. Moral, liberal pundits do not run politics in this country, and it shows: When our military leaves, it leaves the rubble in place. When America invades, the government doesn't pay reparations, and it sure as hell does not set up a medical system, or do anything else nice for the people who have suffered the "benefits" of U.S. Army work.

Posted by: T. Paine | May 28, 2007 12:06 PM

Adele, this is a breathless bit of cluelessness, I must say:

"There's another choice that no one dares to consider: doing things differently."

Ah, but you have dared. Dared beyond what the silly so called peace activist never dreamed. Do things diffently! Wow. This is a sheer Einstein moment. I propose that we all stamp our feet. That will show them!

So, here's two small question for this daring, wonderful plan that nobody has ever consdered: who is the "we" that is going to do things differently? and what things are going to be done differently? The point being that your daring plan has only one fault: it is completely vacuous.

America doesn't exist as and wasn't organized as a charity association - everything America does trails American self interest. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is wrong to pretend that isn't the case. The "things" that could be done differently are going to be done differently by Americans, who will have the same self interest in making sure that Iraq's interest is subordinated to ours. For instance, Iraq did have a medical system, set up under the Baath party up to and including Saddam, that was as good as any in the Middle East. It was state dependent. The sanctions really ate into it. So when the Americans came, what did they do? They tried to disentangle all activities from the state. And they refused to provide security. So that, outside a few show hospitals, medical care went down not up. And given the precarious security situation, by 2006, the professional class got fed up and and started to leave.

Now, let's take your daring plan. How are we supposed to do things differently? Put American doctors in place to kick out the remaining Iraqi doctors? Supply security for hospitals when the American troops are so overstretched that, basically, they secure themselves? Put aid money into medical infrastructure, and end up with hospitals like the Laura Bush monument in Basra, which became a monument to Bechtel (paid 100 million dollars over its original bid, and withdrawing before the hospital was finished), and the kind of mindlessness embodies in posts like yours about Iraq. Perhaps before you announced your mindblowing scientific discovery that we should be doing things different, you should read up on, say, what has been done by the Americans vis a vis the medical system in Iraq. This is a new york times piece about the Basra hospital - although I sure hope new data to spoil your scientific breakthrough, which depends on having a perfect lack of information.

Anyway, I do believe you should be congratulated for achieving the most meaningless response so far to the collapse of the Democratic opposition last week. That's quite an achievement. Now I think you should aim your brilliant policy powers to other problems. Hey, pollution? the solution is - do things differently. World hunger? Unfortunately, people haven't even dared to come up with the solution of - do things differently. Health care in the U.S. Oh man, the cowards who have cluttered up the airwaves and print with bogus talk, when obviously we simply have to do things differently.

It must be frightening to be among the most daring people of your generation, but you will go far, I think.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 28, 2007 12:08 PM

ps - I don't know why the post (hopefully) above this one says anonymous. I wrote it.

Posted by: roger | May 28, 2007 12:12 PM

I think aimai probably summed it up as well as anyone. There is simply no good result that is going to come from this foolish war. There will be a reckoning within Iraq in which the issue of power is finally resolved, most likely with a substantial amount of bloodshed. This is going to happen (as it has been happening) whether we are there or not. Perhaps we can keep the lid on it to some small degree for a time, but in the end this issue of power will have to be resolved.

The U.S. cannot impose a decent solution on the Iraqis. We are also bleeding our armed forces and our treasury simply to avoid facing up to the tragic consequences of our folly and arrogance. This cannot and should not go on indefinitely. We should begin drawing down now and do so with relative haste.

Perhaps a small force can remain in Kuridstan to be available in the event of failed state scenario in part of Iraq where terrorist could take advantage of the void, much as they did in Afghanistan. But beyond that, I don't see us having much to offer to the Iraqis.

It's an adult reality that most of us learn in life -- there are things that are irretrievably broken. And that's why you don't elect a shallow, callow faux cowboy to run the most powerful nation on earth.

Posted by: Klein's tiny left nut | May 28, 2007 12:18 PM

I am floored by Ms. Stan's post and angered by her comment.

You've missed it all Ms. Stan.

When promotion for this war began (the infamous don't roll out a new product in August remark)many of us, with no public platform, the uncredentialed, faceless rabble who are routinely dismissed (as Ms. Stan did in her comment)were stunned that anyone would believe that Iraq could possibly be a threat. Many of us knew that invading Iraq would be opening Pandora's Box and would be the biggest foreign policy blunder in our history. Biggest foreign policy blunder because there were only bad outcomes possible including the worst case scenario of regional conflagration.

The Iraq War revealed still more evidence of OUR decline. A part of that decline is the decay of our public intellectuals.

Step forward Ms. Stan this is where you come in.

Along with people like Beinert and Pollack and too many others who actually supported the war, we now have other "liberals" who just don't get it. Very embarrassing at best.

You don't seem to get that as matters stand today in Iraq OUR PRESENCE is a huge part of the problem.

Iraqis don't see "their" government as "their" government as long as we are there.

As long as we are there the rest of the world will push back and we can expect that push back to increase in intensity.

The civil warS will have no chance to either reach a conclusion or burn out as long as we are there.

As long as we are there our presence energizes the conflict.

We can't stay there and fix anything.

Every day we remain in Iraq WE become more materially and morally weakened as a nation.

Whatever the outcome in Iraq, whether it breaks into three weak states in some form of federation or is partially united as an Islamic nation and a client of Iran or a strong man emerges to re-establish sovereignty, whatever; we will owe Iraq reparations for destoying their nation.

Whether we honor that obligation may well determine our outcome as a nation.

None of this can START until we leave. The turmoil will continue if we stay.

Oh, by the way Ms. Stan, you needed Spencer Ackerman to tell you that Sunni Baathists are starting to bump off al Qaeda. Predictable and predicted.

Ms. Stan you might want to try a little empathy.

Posted by: cal1942 | May 28, 2007 01:20 PM

I think some of you need to take a few deep breaths. Your hatred of the idiot-in-chief seems like it's making it far too easy for you to condemn hundreds of thousands (more) Iraqis to death, as that's the likely consequence of the full-scale civil war that would break out if we left -- I think it would make what's happening now pale in comparison.

The question isn't whether we can fix everything before we leave, I think. The question is can we at least make it so that if we leave, the entire country doesn't descend into complete and utter chaos. Believe what you want -- it isn't *complete* and *utter* chaos at the moment, it's merely pretty damn bad.

Posted by: Forrester | May 28, 2007 01:42 PM

To cal1942: You are faceless because you choose facelessness. Hence your use of a handle rather than your name as a signatory to your post. Reminder, unlike Beinert, et al, I always opposed this war.

To aimai: Yes, the Brits in India is a tragedy that I have contemplated as I imagine a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. No, the Brits should not have stayed indefinitely, but they should have given the job of partition to someone who had actually been to India before he drew the line on the map. They also should not have caved into Jinnah. They got out without a plan because of domestic political pressure. The result was 2 million dead in the immediate aftermath (estimates vary), and two bitter enemies with nuclear weapons pointed at each other. Well, that went well.

I don't know the answer, but I do think that real, regional peace talks need to be convened. An international peacekeeping force needs to be imagined, even if its deployment is not an immediate possibility. A rebuilding scheme that uses Iraqi talent instead of Bechtel's needs to be put together, and negotiations between parties over what it would take to embark on recovery should be proposed. Chances of any of this working may be less than great, but we need to try. And please, folks, check out the Ira Glass mentioned in the post.

Posted by: Adele M. Stan | May 28, 2007 01:47 PM

m783k

Posted by: ro624ck | May 28, 2007 01:53 PM

m783k

Posted by: ro624ck | May 28, 2007 01:54 PM

m783k

Posted by: ro624ck | May 28, 2007 01:56 PM

"You break it, you bought it."

Which means: Give the cashier your money and just leave. The store personnel will sweep up the pieces and toss them in the trash.

If you're going to use an analogy, don't use just half of it. Work it through to its logical result.

Posted by: bob | May 28, 2007 02:08 PM

Ms. Stan:

I am afraid that your original idea was a very bad one - the best thing we can do for the Iraqis is to leave, in an orderly manner. We can discuss reparations with the Iraqi factions and with the neighboring countries once we leave.

Iraq cannot begin to rebuild until we leave. Just as many proclaimed dire consequences for our leaving Vietnam, you are proclaiming dire consequences for our leaving Iraq. The dire consequences didn't happen in Vietnam.

I would propose that we talk with Iraq's neighbors and with the Iraqi factions to work out a schedule for withdrawal of American troops, with possible replacement with a Pan-Muslim peacekeeping force to facilitate the transition. Once we are out of there _then_ we can talk about reparations.

Posted by: ekwhite | May 28, 2007 02:17 PM

Adele's replies go from bad to worse. The whole point of the benchmark scheme just scotched by the Democrats was to plan for the withdrawal. Let's say that slowly. Plan. For. The. Withdrawal. Now, if you plan on no withdrawal, you get either: no withdrawal, or an unplanned one. I believe that the reality in Iraq is that withdrawal is inevitable. It might not even be possible to do the Hillary option, and leave 40 or so thousand soldiers in Iraq to help us in attacking Iran for our next glorious war. It might be that retro colonialism in the Middle East is over.

So, let's talk about "imagining" things. Let's imagine, for instance, a refugee situation. There are 2 million Iraqi refugees. This is something we can imagine doing something about. We could give billions to the Syrians and Jordanians and Iranians so that they can cope with that stress. So, Adele, are you supportive of putting an aid package together for Syria and Iran? Who do you imagine is going to sponsor it. When do you imagine it will pass? Right before, or right after hell freezes over?

If you can't imagine the real constraints on the American use of power, you can't imagine policy at all - you can only fantasize. Fantasy is great, too - it allows you to take the moral high ground and criticize those peace people who are cruelly overlooking the Iraqis being killed. That your suggestions will a, support the continued killing, while b, putting window dressing on it by dreaming up deus ex machina solutions is, of course, not even part of the moral equation. All good intentions, all bad results = happy face liberalism. Wonderful.
Now, perhaps if you really start thinking about the Iraqi situation, you could think about how we could pressure the Democratic party to stand up and come through with a withdrawal plan that opposes drift, that recognizes the need for reconciliation among differing factions in Iraq even if those factions hate the US, that discourages the use of sectarian instruments in the maintaining of an occupation (the creation of Wolf brigades, the use of Kurdish or Shi'ite soldiers in Sunni areas and vice versa), the refusal of the Americans to engage constructively with Sadr, the refusal of the Americans to countenance building economic structures that would be run by the state (re a Washington Post story of two weeks ago and Bremer's own story in the post that dismissed any economic reconstruction not aimed at privatization). Perhaps you should think about the consequences of shutting down media in Iraq when it isn't to the government/American embassy's taste, or the use of the court system as an adjunct of the executive system, ie kangaroo courts. You could think of getting the mercenaries, thought to number 40,000, either out of Iraq or under strict control of the army. Concrete actions that would actually diminish the violence. But why do that when you can imagine wondrous peace troops streaming in from around the world - a coalition of the willing?

Posted by: roger | May 28, 2007 02:30 PM

ps - interesting contrast in the Tapped posts on Iraq. On the one hand, concrete and rather easy action by the Dems is scotched, and, as Klein says, what else could we do? On the other hand, vigorous imaginary action is advocated by Stan, as, for example, international peace troops. Sorta the Dem campaign policy: we promise not to do anything we can do, but we will definitely advocate doing things we can't do - to make you feel better.
Wow. What an intellectual debacle.

Posted by: roger | May 28, 2007 02:36 PM

I don't know the answer, but I do think that real, regional peace talks need to be convened. An international peacekeeping force needs to be imagined, even if its deployment is not an immediate possibility.

So who is going to engage in these negociations? The Bush Administration? Sure and I can create gold from lead. As Atrios points out, for the next 20 months we have to deal with an administration whose incompetence in unparalleled. Hoping they will turn things around now is mere wishful thinking.

Posted by: Col Bat Guano | May 28, 2007 02:37 PM

"Ms. Stan you might want to try a little empathy."

Are you shitting me?

I think it's amazing how many foreign policy experts we have posting here, who know for a fact that the best thing we can do for the Iraqis is leave.

"I've read and heard interviews with folks on the ground in Iraq, non-administration non-military contractor folks there to help out the best they can, that insist that if we pulled out the entire country would plunge into a *FULL* scale civil war/bloodbath."
From everything I've read - say, the Lancet report - the past three years HAVE been a bloodbath in Iraq. Unless you consider half a million dead chump change. So, we have a situation that has already happened that we can talk about. What have the Americans done about it? Was the issue of Iraqi dead an issue in the last election? Has there been one committee since the Dems were elected to look at it? Has there been any discussion of American air warfare which seems to be contributing to it? Has there been one fact finding mission? Has anybody quoted the Lancet study even once in the Congressional record?
Of course not. Bloodbaths occuring while we occupy a country are simply the price it takes, while projected bloodbaths are all about - how we have to keep occupying the country. This double standard of concern for Iraqis makes one suspicious that those morally alive to a future bloodbath are seemingly morally unconcerned about the present one. If it is such a moral big deal, why is the half a million toll not provoking amazing amounts of commentary on this very blog? Why has the Democratic collapse been treated on par with, oh, sporting events on the liberal blogs? Could it be that the underneath the moral argument is simply another excuse for continuing the American overstretch of military and political power?

So here's the question: the bloodbath is happening NOW. What is Congress going to do about it?

Adele,

The situation in Iraq is analogous to brain surgery in which an incompetent surgeon has done severe neurological damage.

At some point, some level of damage, a new surgeon won't be able to fix it. Not even a very well-meaning, highly competent, new surgeon.

All you can do in that case is get out and see if the damaged organ can eventually heal itself to some extent. If the damage is bad enough, it won't be able to.

Insisting that we can fix Iraq at this point is like saying Terri Schiavo just needed one more quack procedure in order to regain full health.

Adele writes: "They got out without a plan because of domestic political pressure. The result was 2 million dead in the immediate aftermath (estimates vary), and two bitter enemies with nuclear weapons pointed at each other."

What, you think the nuclear standoff is because of partition? Absurd. Nothing Britain could have done would have restrained the Hindu and Muslim extremists which are, frankly, at the heart of the problem.

Note that for all the damage done by partition, India is, in places, thriving, and India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh all get along pretty well with Great Britain, apart from the Pakistani terrorists who keep trying to blow it up. Of course, they want to blow us up too, and we had bugger all to do with partition.

Hey, roger, way to paste in the entire blog post and comment thread. Nice! First day on the web?

Forrester writes: "If a sane adminstration were taking over now, instead of 20 months from now, I think it would be obvious we need to stick around and try things differently"

That *might* be rational if we weren't being actively and violently opposed by three hostile factions, which have infiltrated supposedly 'friendly' Iraqi forces.

As others have noted, we can't even unshit the bed in New Orleans, where we don't even have to worry about suicide car bombs.

What makes you think we'd be able to do better in a combat zone?

Jon, actually, I just copied one sentence from Forrester's comment. I don't really know how that happened. Damn. There's no preview button, otherwise I would have caught it. Sorry.

Okay, constructive comment:

The best bet for fixing Iraq's medical system would probably involve Cuba.

Likelihood of that happening under US occupation? Under a President of either party?

Do I even need to answer that?

Jon, the comment was supposed to be:

Quote from Forrester:

I've read and heard interviews with folks on the ground in Iraq, non-administration non-military contractor folks there to help out the best they can, that insist that if we pulled out the entire country would plunge into a *FULL* scale civil war/bloodbath. Endquote.

Then the comment on my part was supposed to be:
There is a disproportion between the moral concern with the future bloodbath and the moral indifference towards the present one. The experts - like Lancet - who have shown that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died in the past three years has provoked zero political action by Congress. So let's talk about what Congress can do to prevent the bloodbath NOW, instead of using a future bloodbath as an excuse for an openended occupation.

"Doing things differently"...are you serious? What faction in our government has shown even a scintilla of interest, much less articulated any sort of plan, for "doing things differently"? If your head is that far in the sand, perhaps you can use for it something worthwhile, say, drilling for oil. Is it not, even by now, apparent to you that no one in the current administration is willing to consider taking a different tack? Does the "surge" suggest to you that our leadership has any intention of "doing things differently?" And perhaps you might explain just how we go about "doing thinigs differently" at this point, when the Iraqis themseves have made it perfectly clear they don't want us there? The fatuousness of such a blithe, throwaway suggestion is rather mindboggling and makes me wonder about your background in the arena of foreign policy. Is this truly what the American Prospect considers to pass for intelligent discourse?

"Doing things differently"...are you serious? What faction in our government has shown even a scintilla of interest, much less articulated any sort of plan, for "doing things differently"? If your head is that far in the sand, perhaps you can use for it something worthwhile, say, drilling for oil. Is it not, even by now, apparent to you that no one in the current administration is willing to consider taking a different tack? Does the "surge" suggest to you that our leadership has any intention of "doing things differently?" And perhaps you might explain just how we go about "doing thinigs differently" at this point, when the Iraqis themseves have made it perfectly clear they don't want us there? The fatuousness of such a blithe, throwaway suggestion is rather mindboggling and makes me wonder about your background in the arena of foreign policy. Is this truly what the American Prospect considers to pass for intelligent discourse?

"Doing things differently"...are you serious? What faction in our government has shown even a scintilla of interest, much less articulated any sort of plan, for "doing things differently"? If your head is that far in the sand, perhaps you can use for it something worthwhile, say, drilling for oil. Is it not, even by now, apparent to you that no one in the current administration is willing to consider taking a different tack? Does the "surge" suggest to you that our leadership has any intention of "doing things differently?" And perhaps you might explain just how we go about "doing thinigs differently" at this point, when the Iraqis themseves have made it perfectly clear they don't want us there? The fatuousness of such a blithe, throwaway suggestion is rather mindboggling and makes me wonder about your background in the arena of foreign policy. Is this truly what the American Prospect considers to pass for intelligent discourse?

So which Kübler-Ross stage is Adele moving through?

Is this denial, or has she made it to bargaining?

I think the level of highly intelligent, informed, passionate disagrement with Ms. Stan says all that need be said.....On a personal note, it doesn't entirely surprise me that some Americans are finding it hard to let go of the notion that they can be a force for good in the world. But America is alone and discredited. What we 'broke' was our reputation, and now we must learn to live with that disfigured image. Searching for distorted mirrors to give us an illusory sense of our own nobility, wondering why nobody praises our beauty anymore: all this just postpones recognition of the truth.

"On a personal note, it doesn't entirely surprise me that some Americans are finding it hard to let go of the notion that they can be a force for good in the world."

Oh, we'll be able to be a force for good, once we get sane people in charge. If we make the effort - and we will have to make a huge effort.

It's just that we can't be a force for good in this case. At least not until the Iraqis themselves come to some equilibrium.

Ten or twenty years from now, perhaps Iraq will be in a situation where we can contribute positively, with a society set up in such a way that it would be worthwhile. (On the other hand, if it's a genocidal, repressive Talibanesque society, then why bother?)

All that said, it's also quite likely that if we leave China will swoop in and make alliances with the ruling powers, regardless of how vile they are. That's just how China rolls.

(And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that is part of why Bush/Cheney don't want to leave. If it isn't, it should be.)

I want to thank Roger for making such incredibly important points. I was especially struck by his observation that the bloodbath/civil war we're in *now* is represented as the natural outcome of our good intentions/the cost of doing business but the bloodbath/civil war *to come* is represented as the reason we can't get out because *that* would be the really bad one. Very succinctly put.

I'd also like to challenge Ms. Stan's notion that Britain was forced out all of a sudden and had no time to plan for an orderly withdrawal and the end result was massacre and partition. Wrong. They had a lot of time to plan but they refused to do so. The struggle between hindus and muslims grew directly out of long term british manipulation of internal indian ethnic struggles--not unlike the manipulation of sunni, shi'a and kurdish struggles which were also both fostered and suppressed by first the british,then the baath party and now the US. Jinnah and the force for partition grew out of plans for life after the british left india--if they didn't know in time plenty of other people knew that it was only a matter of time. Forgive me for pointing out that the same is true of Iraq, as it was true of vietnam. Every military historian who is not an idiot will tell you that in the long run a local population will win out over a foreign invading force unless the foreign force is sucessful at utterly killing the natives. I take it that Ms. Stan is opposed to the genocide of the Iraqi peoples on the scale we practiced in opening up the US to settlement? If so, we have only two choices--pulling out under our own steam, or being forced to helicopter off the roof of the embassy under fire.

I hate this expression but we are not an "honest broker" in Iraq and we never could be.

thanks to all the posters here for demonstrating to Ms. Stan that there are lots of people in the "peace party" who have thought through the end results of our leaving Iraq. I'm sorry if our appraisal of the situation doesn't meet Ms. STan's sentimental needs, but it seems pretty clear eyed to me.

aimai

I'm wondering at what point Ms. Stan channels David Broder and upbraids the commenters for a lack of civility...

From "Addie" Stans bio profile: "Outside of the office, Stan indulges an array of interests, with music taking center stage. She is in the midst of planning a second career as a lounge-singing ukulele-player."

The "Don Ho" joke almost writes itself...

Problem is, the "Pottery Barn Rule" does NOT mean you get to stay in Iraq.

It means you have to leave.

Would the Pottery Barn allow some bull of a customer stay in the china shop for years on end, breaking merchandise? I think not.

They make you pay. Then they make you leave.

By the same token, you can't "bring democracy" or "make a country free" by violating its sovereignty or occupying it. Are you saying we had to bomb Iraq to save it? Occupying Iraq to "free" Iraq is equally Orwellian/Stalinist.

It's a defining American insight that an occupation defies any/every common understanding of "taking responsibility" for the condition of Iraq.

Anyone who asserts "we have a responsibility" to stay or fix things is willfully obtuse--and had best revisit just why America was established in the first place. It's a 'take the timber out of your own eye' kinda moment, really, isn't it?

I'm sorry, but wishing it could be does not make it so.

If you ever get access to JSTOR, look up a piece from 1996 called "Democratization and the Dangers of War" by Mansfield (not that one) and Snyder. The shitstorm that will ensue from our future withdrawal was basically preordained from the moment we created this massive power vacuum in Iraq. The best we can do now is to drag the process out, and while we're dragging the nongovernmental forces currently killing civilians and American soldiers in Iraq (mostly the sectarian militias) will get better at killing people. The inevitable could easily be worsened by our good intentions.

Frankly, I think it's time we stop pretending that this war could have gone better. The very nature of our misadventure works against the sort of rosy scenarios supporters of the continued occupation must have in mind as possible outcomes. The power vacuum, the massive unemployment among trained former Iraqi soldiers, the preexisting Kurdish autonomous movement (which, incidentally, almost guarantees Turkish action inside Iraq sometime in the relatively near future as they seek to prevent an independent Kurdistan from arising from the ashes of Iraq)...all of these were not only predictable, but a hell of a lot of us predicted them and, accordingly, tried like hell to stop the war from happening.

You need to come to terms with this tragic fact: the repercussions of this war's launching will be terrible, long-reaching, and inevitable, and they are all direct results of the decision to invade itself, and not the misconduct of the war following Saddam's flight from Baghdad.

jcomet, I was so hoping that no whore or slut jokes would occur on this thread. Surely there should be a Godwin's rule about that - posts written by women will at a certain point inevitably get some whore or slut joke. The Don Ho joke didn't write itself - you wrote it.

Roger -

You may not care for my characterization, but I'll stand by it. Anyone who accepts money to shill the kind of senseless and apologetic bullsh*t Ms. Stan seems to be selling is nothing better than a you-know-what, regardless of her sex. I've used the same term in other fora to refer to Tom Friedman, Broder, and other male political prostitutes as well. If you don't want to be called a whore, don't act like one...

"jcomet, I was so hoping that no whore or slut jokes would occur on this thread. Surely there should be a Godwin's rule about that - posts written by women will at a certain point inevitably get some whore or slut joke. The Don Ho joke didn't write itself - you wrote it. "

Um, I don't think it was a slut/whore reference, I think it was a ukelele/Don Ho reference.

It would appear I was mistaken.

I think Adele Stan's views are wrong. It is comic, however, to think she organized those views to make the money Tom Friedman or Broder make - I would guess she might make one hundredth of that. Secondly, if she was writing strongly anti-war stuff - instead of the pap that she writes in her post - she'd still be writing for money. One could get into the semantics of whoring - I think the whole money, sex, women spiderweb is full of nasty bigotries - but I would bet that she wrote what she did because ... she believes it.

I'm all for a lively exchange of insults, but they should be relative to the positions held by the person one insults, not random insults with a sexist overtone that are neither here nor there. And, actually, whores, insofar as they make love and don't make war, are innocent so far as I know of causing mass death.

Peddling ass is really not the problem with this post. A coercive moralism plus an ill informed notion of the reality of the occupation is.

jccomet's comments are trollish. As a ukulele joke they would have been pretty funny, as a sexist wh--joke they are really unfunny and uncalled for.

Look, the prolbem with STan's perspective isn't that it is so out of bounds that it needs to be bought and paid for,or that it is the standard right wing GOP talking point and needs to be paid for because even Mallard Filmore hides behind his alter ego as duck before he says what he says--

the problem is that this is what a lot of *people* think, liberal and non libera, anti war and pro war. A *lot* of people can't figure out what to do in Iraq because they still think of America as all powerful and all moral. To the extent that people actually think we have a meaningful choice to make in Iraq they are expressing childish and delusional fantasies of power *we actually don't have.* But they aren't doing anything that needs to be bought and paid for.

I've had the *exact same* conversationwith the guy rebuilding my house and he's a staunch republican who is anti-war and anti-bush at this point. But pulling out and paying reparations doesn't enter into his imaginary, as it doesn't enter into Ms. Stan's, because it doesn't comport with much older, atavistic, almost incohate understandings of American and Americans that simply doesn't permit failure. This is international action within the Romance genre in which even adult readers assume that on page one there is a hero and a heroine, and though there may be 400 pages of tribulation the two will end up together at the end.

Its impossible for many people, at the height of empire, to imagine the rapid slide into irrellevance and impotence that a country can take. That is why HOward Dean's perfectly obvious remark that we "wouldn't always have the biggest or most powerful military in the world" was considered so outrageous by the press and the populace. Its a perfectly unexceptionable remark, like saying "You know, the third reich probably isn't going to last 1000 years" or "the holy roman empire is neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire" but it was treated as a kind of lese majeste (sorry I can't access the accents in this browser).

You have to unpack STan's argument, or my contractor, to realize what is really going on. The death of hope, the recognition of our essential powerlessness in the face of the situation in Iraq, the fact that we can only (at this point) kill people, stand between people killing people, loot the country, punish our own people for looting the country, and die is truly, truly frightening. Its easier for people to wave an imaginary wand and say "oh yea, what will happen when we *go?*" or "why don't we fix the hospitals?" than to take a hard look at the situation and say "we're f*&kced, the Iraqi people are f*&^ced, and there's *nothing we can do.*" Because on top of all the shame and grief and dishonor of it all nothing we can do is really, really,...well...embarassing.

aimai

Joining the pile-on:

1) If there were clear ways that we could fix, or at least ameliorate, the damage we've done, we'd have an obligation to do so.

2) There are no such clear ways, even under ideal American leadership.

3) Under Bush's leadership, things in Iraq have steadily worsened for four years. There's no reason to expect that the next 20 months will be different.

'We' don't get to fix anything. Bush, whose capacity to make a mess of anything has given the lie to the old adage "to err is human, but to REALLY screw things up requires a computer," is the one who gets to try.

4) So any attempt to 'fix' things would have to take place in 2009 and 2010, after Bush has made things worse. Even if we knew how to fix things over there, it might could take us all of 2009 and 2010 just to 'fix' Iraq to where it is now, after Bush gets through.

5) Or we could just get out now. Much simpler, less costly, and about as productive.

What's really sad is that "My comments here are spurred, in part, by this weekend's remarkable edition of 'This American Life.'" Really? You are re-thinking this entire, colossal fuckup NOW because of one blinkered, naive, context-free episode of a human interest radio show? Funny, my reaction, upon listening to that show, was, "Oh shit, Ira Glass is in the tank." It was more like an episode of "we've turned a corner. Really, I mean it this time." Such deep observations as "some people in the military are trying [four years later] to learn from our mistakes." Or, "If we're doing something good, shouldn't we stay?" Or even, "Maybe things will start to get better soon." It was as if the war had started yesterday and we had no reason to believe that any problems had or would arise. It failed to acknowledge the fact we have been hearing some version of this story for nearly the entire duration of the war, and yet things in Iraq have continuously gone in only one direction, down, that the violence has continued to get worse. And there was no discussion of the greater context - we can isolate a hopeful detail here, an encouraging sign there, but what about the 650,000 civilians who have died? The 3500 soldiers and the trillion dollars? Shouldn't we be asking not "what is our responsiblity?" but "what is our responsibility in light of what has come before?" ?

"Funny, my reaction, upon listening to that show, was, "Oh shit, Ira Glass is in the tank.""

It was probably a requirement in the Showtime contract.

" because it doesn't comport with much older, atavistic, almost incohate understandings of American and Americans that simply doesn't permit failure. "

That said, we permitted it when we elected it.

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