WE MISS SADDAM:

Iraqmire: Bush Gets Desperate (David Corn, 09/08/2003, The Nation)

Television viewers on Sunday night had a choice of two George W. Bushes. They could see him standing tall on a Showtime docudrama on 9/11 (produced by a prominent Hollywood conservative), in which a heroic Bush all but exclaims "damn the torpedoes" before all but parachuting Rambo-like into Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden single-handedly. (Remember bin Laden?) Or they could watch the real thing stiffly read a speech in which he did little than to urge Americans and allies to buck up and stay his course.

There's another possibility with regard to the President's somewhat desultory speech last night: it wasn't desperate but obligatory. If the President believes things are going fairly well and that we'll pretty much be able to draw down to a negligible force level in Iraq by the Spring, then you'd give just such a speech telling everyone that you know they're concerned about continued attacks on our soldiers and you are too, but it's nothing to get antsy about.

For a take on the situation in Iraq that might more appropriately be termed desperate, try this one, THE IMPORTANCE OF LOSING THE WAR: Relinquishing the fantasy of a victory in Iraq is the true moral mission of our time. (Jonathan Schell, The Nation and TomDispatch.com)

The main mistake of American policy in Iraq was waging the war at all. That is not a conclusion that anyone should have to labor to arrive at. [...]

Recognition of this mistake -- one that may prove as great as the decision to embark on the Vietnam War -- is essential if the best (or at any rate the least disastrous) path out of the mess is to be charted. Otherwise, the mistake may be compounded, and such indeed is the direction in which a substantial new body of opinion now pushes the United States. [...]

The practical problem of Iraq's future remains. The Iraqi state has been forcibly removed. That state was a horrible one; yet a nation needs a state. The children must go to school; the trains must run; the museums must open; murderers must be put in jail. But the United States, precisely because it is a single foreign state, which like all states has a highly self-interested agenda of its own, is incapable of providing Iraq with a government that serves its own people. The United States therefore must, to begin with, surrender control of the operation to an international force. [...]

The good options have probably passed us by. They may never have existed. If the people of Iraq are given back their country, there isn't the slightest guarantee that they will use the privilege to create a liberal democracy. The creation of democracy is an organic process that must proceed from the will of the local people. Sometimes that will is present, more often it is not. Vietnam provides an example. Vietnam today enjoys the self-determination it battled to achieve for so long; but it has not become a democracy.

On the other hand, just because Iraq's future remains to be decided by its talented people, it would also be wrong to categorically rule out the possibility that they will escape tyranny and create democratic government for themselves. The United States and other countries might even find ways of offering modest assistance in the project; it is beyond the power of the United States to create democracy for them.

The matter is not in our hands. It never was.

The regime we removed was "horrible", but the options for its successor aren't promising and never were. Of course, by a promising option, Mr. Schell means only the emergence of a Western-style liberal democracy. Yet, he's is certain about just this much: it was a mistake to remove the horrible option. Well, maybe not so sure, because he then holds out the hope that the Iraqis will indeed choose the democratic option. So, the crux of the essay seems to be nothing more than that we should avow an obvious victory to instead be a defeat and get out immediately before we can take credit for the emergence of a democratic state.

Here's a useful exercise, swap out the Left fotr terrorists in the President's speech:

The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan and beyond would be a grave setback for international [Leftism]. The [Left]ists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall, and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of [the Left], and turn to the pursuits of peace. Everywhere that freedom takes hold, [the Left] will retreat.

Our enemies understand this. They know that a free Iraq will be free of them -- free of [the French], and [the New York Times editorial page], and [Democratic presidential candidates]. They know that as democracy rises in Iraq, all of their hateful ambitions will fall like the statues of the former dictator. And that is why, five months after we liberated Iraq, a collection of [intellectuals and Hollywood types] is desperately trying to undermine Iraq's progress and throw the country into chaos.

Some of the attackers are [washed up authors from the '60s], who fled the battlefield and now fight in the shadows. Some of the attackers are foreign[politicians], who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America and other free nations. We cannot be certain to what extent these groups work together. We do know they have a common goal -- reclaiming Iraq for tyranny. [...]

This [verbal] violence is directed not only against our coalition, but against anyone in Iraq who stands for decency, and freedom and progress.

There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The [Left has] a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world.

MORE:
Tet II (Frank Gaffney, Jr., September 08, 2003, Fox News)

Six weeks ago, one of the most brilliant observers of our time wrote an essay calling to mind a sorry chapter in American history and warning of its possible repetition in the present conflict in Iraq.

The article, written by John O'Sullivan at the end of July, was entitled "Remember Tet Offensive: Déja Vu." It raised the prospect that we are in danger of allowing defeat to be snatched from decisive American victory over Saddam Hussein's regime -- just as was done 35 years ago by our North Vietnamese and Vietcong enemies. This concern is especially warranted in the wake of Secretary of State Colin Powell once again persuading President Bush that the United States should seek help on Iraq from, of all places, the United Nations. [...]

As Mr. O'Sullivan put it: "The mainstream U.S. media depicted Tet as a severe defeat for the United States and as the beginning of an endless quagmire for American forces. That became the conventional wisdom of both the media and political elites. And as a result, the North Vietnamese eventually triumphed on the only battlefield where the United States could be defeated -- the American home front."

Today, the reporting from Iraq is, if anything, even more defeatist than was true at the time of Tet -- with even less basis in fact for its gloominess. Yes, American servicemen and women are being killed or wounded in small numbers with regrettable frequency. And yes, there have been several successful and murderous attacks by those determined to undo the liberation of Iraq on strategic targets such as U.N. headquarters, an important Shiite (search) mosque and Iraq's economic infrastructure.

Still, seen in perspective, these amount to even more isolated incidents than those associated with Tet. The costs to America and her friends are far smaller, though still acutely painful. To hear the chattering class (search) -- the media and political elite that construed and succeeded in defining the Tet Offensive as a rout for the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies -- tell it, however, Washington now "needs" to be bailed out of a yawning quagmire in Iraq.

REMEMBER TET OFFENSIVE (John O'Sullivan, July 31, 2003, UPI - NATIONAL REVIEW)

"Remember the Tet Offensive" is the mantra I have been repeating to myself in recent days as gloomy media accounts of the deepening U.S quagmire in Iraq crowded the airwaves and news pages. For the benefit of those who remember Tet only fitfully or not at all, it was the 1968 uprising by the Communist Vietcong across Vietnam that brought guerrilla warfare to the gates of the U.S. embassy in South Vietnam. It was a dramatic escalation of the war, but it was also a severe defeat for the Vietcong that revealed the fraudulence of their claim to be a people's army.

Among the many aspects of Tet were that South Vietnam's population failed to rally to the Vietcong's standard; that the Vietcong carried out mass murders of the civilian population in the areas it briefly occupied; that many of the Vietcong's strongest units were destroyed in battle by the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces; and that South Vietnamese forces quickly reestablished the Saigon government's authority throughout the country.

After Tet, the Vietcong had no chance of winning on their own. They were reduced to being the passengers of the North Vietnamese regular army that carried them to victory in a purely conventional invasion seven years later.

Tet, in addition to being a strategic defeat for the Vietcong, was also ample justification for America's Vietnam intervention on both humanitarian grounds.

But that is not how it was presented to the people by the U.S. media at the time. As the late Peter Braestrup demonstrated in his magisterial study, Big Story, the mainstream U.S. media depicted Tet as a severe defeat for the United States and as the beginning of an endless quagmire for American forces. That became the conventional wisdom of both the media and political elites. And as a result, the North Vietnamese eventually triumphed on the only battlefield where the United States could be defeated — the American home front.

Fast forward to the present. Here is a very typical mainstream-media summary, from Time magazine as it happens, of the present situation facing U.S. forces in Iraq:

... military men and women under siege, a casualty count that exceeds the toll of the first Gulf War, anti-Americanism in a land where they had been told our forces would be greeted like heroes, costs reaching a billion dollars a week and going up, some troops homesick and disillusioned, their spouses and parents having no idea when they will see their loved ones again — and no end in sight to any of it.

One could add other discouraging details — much of Baghdad is still without electricity, unemployment accounts for half the Iraqi workforce, Saddam Hussein remains at large — to this account.

With or without these extras, however, Time's picture is false because it is a selection of negatives with none of the positive signs of Iraqi recovery included. And recent signs of revived order and economic recovery are real and impressive: the south and north of Iraq are already stable; food distribution is working well; oil production is now higher than one million barrels a day; schools are open nationwide; town councils are functioning in most major cities; Iraqis are joining the new civil defense organization; and, of course, Uday and Qusay Hussain are no longer planning the murder of U.S. soldiers.

THE IRAQ EFFECT (AMIR TAHERI, September 8, 2003, NY Post)

To be sure, Iraq has not been transformed into a democracy, and may need a generation or more to develop the institutions it needs. But the fact is that Iraqis now enjoy a measure of political freedom they did not know before.

Iraq is the only Arab country today where all political parties, from communist to conservative, operate freely. Visitors will be impressed by the openness of the political debate there, something not found anywhere else in the Arab world. Also, for the first time, Iraq has no political prisoners.

Almost 150 newspapers and magazine are now published there, offering a diversity not found in any other Arab country. One theme of these new publications is the need for democratization in the Arab world. This may be putting the cart before the horse. What Arabs, and Muslims in general, most urgently need is basic freedom, without which democracy cannot be built.

The impact of Iraq's liberation is already felt throughout the region. [...]

Many Arab countries (including Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan) already enjoy a degree of freedom that could, in time, lead toward democratization. But, being small and peripheral states, none could have a major impact on the Muslim world as a whole.

Iraq is in a different category. A free Iraq is already affecting the political landscape of the Middle East; a democratic Iraq could change the whole Arab world. The goal is worth fighting for.

Despite the current difficulties in Iraq, the United States, Britain and other democratic nations should keep their eyes on the big picture.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 8, 2003 8:29 PM