Three Years On

We didn't go to Portland's big Iraq protest on Sunday, but we had a front row seat. We found a cozy table at a restaurant on the route of the march, and settled in to watch. It took over an hour for all the marchers to file by. It was great to see that kind of turnout.

Of course, protesting the war is mostly a symbolic exercise, given the Busheviks' unlimited scorn for public opinion. There's absolutely nothing anybody outside the beltway can do to convince them to do anything differently. But then, efforts to censure or impeach the guy are basically just symbolic, too. Nothing's going to change, nothing's going to be different as a result, but sometimes it just has to be attempted anyway, just on the principle of the thing.

Realistically speaking, we're stuck with George and his cronies until January 2009, and we're stuck with his war for at least that long. I'm starting to think that their "exit strategy" is to try to leave the Iraq war on autopilot for the next few years, and dump it all in the next president's lap. That way (they may be hoping) somebody else gets to take all the blame for losing.

After all, according to Our Leaders, we've got three long years of remarkable progress in Iraq under our belts now, and things are just getting better and better every day. In fact, Uncle Dick still insists that his promises that we'd be greeted as liberators, and that the insurgents were on their last legs about a year ago, were "basically accurate and reflect reality".

However, even the beltway punditocracy is witnessing a few recriminations over Iraq. Of course this won't translate into doing anything differently next time around. When we start ramping up for a war in Iran, or Syria, or Venezuela, they'll set their skepticism aside again and go back to the same naive rah-rah-go-team reaction we saw with Iraq.

We can speculate all we like about why Bush & Co. really started this war, and why so much of the public backed him for so long. In the end I'm not sure we'll ever really know. And whether it was originally about oil, or WMDs, or "transforming" the middle east, or getting revenge for 9/11, or wallowing in WWII nostalgia, or bringing about the Rapture, the question facing us now is the same: Ok, so now what?

Yesterday the Oregonian ran what it presented as two opposing viewpoints on the war. One, from the neocon Max Boot, argued that the war isn't actually a big deal in terms of money spent or lives lost. The implication is that we can just stay the course indefinitely, do nothing different, and it'll all be ok. The other viewpoint, by retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, argues that the best strategy now would actually be to send more troops, and institute a draft if necessary. On top of those guest columns, the Oregonian's ever-reptilian David Reinhard chimes in with one of his usual hatchet jobs, attacking anyone who doesn't love the war or who won't pretend it's going great. I guess we're supposed to come away thinking that these three pieces represent the full spectrum of public opinion about the war. Or at least that subset of public opinion that the media considers "responsible". Somehow, to the media, "responsible" opinion always means "pro-war". Here's a blurb bashing the Oregonian for yesterday's odd editorial choices. And here's an interesting column arguing the case for an immediate withdrawal. I'm not sure I agree with the argument in its entirety, but it does make a convincing case that our continued presence in Iraq is not helping matters one bit.

I'm starting to think that partition is unavoidable, and the only way to mitigate the civil war is to do it sooner rather than later. It didn't have to be this way. It wasn't always inevitable, any more than the partition of Yugoslavia was inevitable in 1989. Perhaps it could've been prevented before the cycle of violence really got rolling, but it's too late for that now. Really I don't see why this is often considered a worst-case scenario. Iraq as it exists is a purely artificial entity, with borders drawn to suit the needs of 1920s colonialists. You can't simply draw lines on a map without any regard to the people who live there, and expect the inhabitants to automatically feel they all have something in common. Throughout the history of Iraq, it's been argued that a "strong hand" is required to hold the country together, be it a colonial power, king, military dictator, religious dictator, or something else. And if our experience there so far is any guide, that conventional wisdom may actually be true. If so, and the only workable alternatives are partition or dictatorship, splitting the country into thirds seems like the lesser of two evils, as ugly as it would be at the outset. That is, assuming that we have any right, or any power, to shape how events unfold in Iraq anymore, and I'm not convinced that we do, or ever really did.

Updated: Did I toldja so, or did I toldja so? Today (3/21), our Glorious Leader let it be known that we'll have troops in Iraq for at least another 3 years, so that it'll be the next president's mess to clean up -- and hopefully take all the blame for. And we already knew that the next president gets to inherit GWB's unsustainable budget deficits, too. Is this the Busheviks' new master plan? Steer us straight at an iceberg, hop overboard in a nice cushy lifeboat at the last minute, and let the rest of us figure out what to do next? Niiiice.

tags: iraq anniversary protest portland bush cheney partition