Ah, the media has thrown down the gauntlet on Iraq. Ron Brownstein, writing in the L.A. Times, calls the lack of debate in Washington a dereliction of political duty. The Washington Post reports Dems are split and therefore looking weak over the Iraq war. Time to act.
Brownstein lays out the three choices he sees bouncing around Washington: more troops, fewer troops or stay the course. So far, Dems seem to be taking all three sides, except stay the course means criticize the president without offering alternatives—the choice preferred by DNC Chair Howard Dean.
But in doing so, Brownstein has framed a false choice for our politicians. By calling the situation in Iraq a war, Brownstein frames the decision as having to do with troops, which then gets even more simplified into a question of numbers of troops. It's not. Iraq is a failed state under American occupation. As such, the solution has never been military. It has always been political and it will remain so.
So are the media going to push politicians to have the wrong debate? Let's hope not. Today, Juan Cole urges everybody to remember that the stakes in Iraq are global. According to Cole, we'll know when we've got a civil war in Iraq when the militias are battling to hold territory, just as in Lebanon. We'll also know by the genocidal tactics used by all sides and the refugees that are sure to follow. And that's not to mention the threat of instability spreading throughout the gulf.
Norman Solomon raises another crucial point today. Right now, it appears more Americans are anti-losing than anti-war. That kind of makes sense, since Iraq is not really a war. The war part, the U.S. invasion, ended in mid-2003. What Americans want is for the post-war phase to end well, and right now, Americans feel Bush is losing it.
So what's the winning argument in the Iraq debate? If we're going to get anywhere, Dems are going to have to ask the president how he intends to get a political solution to the crisis in Iraq. From the latest wire reports, it looks as though the Kurds and the Sunnis, aided by U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad, have just decided to exclude the concerns of the entire Sunni portion of the population. That means the situation has just taken one more step closer to war.
And that opens the door for responsible Dems. A political solution requires a political process. A political process needs time to work, and the only way to get more time in Iraq right now is to show the Sunnis that they will be included and their concerns will be addressed. Bob Dreyfuss outlined how this might work last week.
It will also require a change in the operational strategy of the U.S. military. It will need to shift from attacking the insurgents and leaving the cities vulnerable to crime (37 percent of Iraqi deaths are due to non-occupation-related criminal acts) and focus on providing real security, popular accountability, and the rule of law.
Get the political and security tracks going, and in short order an Iraqi-led reconstruction effort can put Iraqis to work, get Iraqi kids back in school and give people a stake in the future.
Unfortunately, none of Brownstein's choices lead to peace. That's because this mess o'potamia ain't a war.
--Patrick Doherty |
Monday 1:19 PM
