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TechnoratiJust Around the Corner
Five years in and the only thing we can say about our military misadventure in Iraq is that victory always seems to be around the corner.
The problem is that every time we turn a corner, victory seems that much farther away.
We received a reminder of this on Tuesday. On the same day that a federal official was testifying before the U.S. Senate that violence was on the decline, there were reports that 46 were killed in skirmishes and attacks around the country. This was just days after another set of attacks left nearly 70 dead.
War supporters would call me a pessimist. But, after five years in which nearly 4,000 American soldiers and tens of thousands - possibly hundreds of thousands - of Iraqis have been killed, I don't know how you can see it any other way.
Consider the report presented to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday by Comptroller General David Walker of the federal Government Accountability Office.
According to a report on his presentation in The New York Times, the average number of insurgent attacks had fallen to about a third of last summer's average - from an average of 180 a day in June to about 60 a day in January.
While the decrease is good news, its importance must be placed within the larger context of the last five years. The 60-a-day average is "roughly equivalent to the levels of violence in the spring of 2005, has remained essentially unchanged since the last significant decrease between October and November," the Times reported.
Essentially, the violence had plateaued at what I would consider an unreasonably high level - one that, given the events of the last few weeks, appears to be temporary.
"Based on reports from February, violence may already be increasing," the paper said. "An independent tally by The Associated Press recorded a jump last month in the average number of Iraqis killed per day compared with January's figures."
The AP figures are pretty stark. Its count found that, "at the height of unrest from November 2006 to August 2007, on average approximately 65 Iraqis died each day as a result of violence," according to an AP story by Bradley Brooks.
"As conditions improved, the daily death toll steadily declined," he wrote. "It reached its lowest point in more than two years on January 2008, when on average 20 Iraqis died each day.
"Those numbers have since jumped. In February, approximately 26 Iraqis died each day as a result of violence, and so far in March, that number is up to 39 daily. These figures reflect the months in which people were found, and not necessarily - in the case of mass graves - the months in which they were killed."
The military discounts the numbers, saying that a longer view is necessary to understand what has been happening. But that longer view also can be used to paint the spike in violence as an anomaly, a short-term blip that was destined to fall to pre-spike levels after a while.
I am not saying that this is what happened. I raise this possibility only to make the point that the larger questions are no longer being debated. We've fallen into a pattern in which we argue over the meaning of individual attacks and individual deaths, but no longer spend a lot of time discussing what we get for our presence in Iraq, or even what the Iraqis are getting.
By we I mean the mainstream media and the president and not the public, which has been consistent in its opposition to the war for the last couple of years.
In poll after poll, Americans say they want American troops to come home and that they want the money being spent on the war to be spent on needs at home (repairing aging infrastructure, for instance, or providing health care).
President George W. Bush, however, continues to view the war through rose-colored glasses, claiming major improvements in security that are at odds with the facts and pointing to a liberated Iraq as a growing bastion of freedom and democracy in the region.
He needs to take off the glasses and take a clear and honest look at what he has wrought in Iraq: nearly 4,000 dead and thousands of wounded American soldiers, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, a damaged standing in the world, a busted budget, the fraying of the U.S. Constitution.
It's time to pull the plug on this misadventure.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is hkalet@pacpub.com and his blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.
14 Comments so far
Show AllI was just thinking about the China/Tibet/Olympics thing and recalled that we boycotted the Moscow Olympics in large part because the USSR had invaded Afghanistan. There is a circle. Maybe victory in Iraq really does mean about what it portended for the Russians. Seems fair enough.
Victory is right around the corner? It's a mad circle and there are no corners.
There is no victory to be had in Iraq. We lost the moment we got into it. The only thing in question is, how much have we lost? If you murdered your neighbor and stoled his house, how long would you have to stay there before you could say you had won?
Their plan is to stay there forever. It won't work. Another part of their plan is destroying and looting our own country, with this part they are having much success. These same creeps did 9/11 as the pretext for this whole mess.
The author seems unable to accept that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died. The author is colluding in denying the level of killing by the US in Iraq. This is a disservice.
The only victory we can look forward to is to finally replace the lawlwess warmongers in this administration. That should be possible if we can stop fighting and mudslinging long enough to elect either or both Democrats. One would think by some postings that Hillary had declared war herself, rather than voting with several hundred others to allow something to be done that was purposely not fully explained in a time of national consternation over terrorism.
As for victory in Iraq, it doesn`t matter if we stay or go, we are screwed either way, and so are the Iraqi people. Bush has a vague idea of what he has done over there but is so taken with his dream of a great legacy that he cannot comprehend the full extent of the horror and destruction we have wrought with no solution in sight. We appear to be on the brink of a serious recession or worse that may have some bearing on the occupation.
Three trillion dollars of war and counting will be nearly impossible to keep adding to with Repugs still screaming for tax relief, as our country will default and become a banana republic. We will either have to bring our military home where they belong or allow the rich who have built immense fortunes under Bushism to help pay the bills as was the case in previous conflicts.
Victory as a concept applied to the willful murder of a nation's people is an obscenity.
An average of 39 Iraqis are dying violently per day because of the (illegal) occupation of Iraq, a country that counted approximately 27 million before the invasion in 2003. How many Americans, in your country of at minimum, 300 million, are dying violently each day? I would suggest that the (illegal) occupation of Iraq creates a higher ratio per capita of violent deaths than even in your heavily armed country. How would it feel to know that every step you take may be your death from bombs or bullets? Having huge walls circumscribe your life based on sectarian differences that were not emphasized before the "war"?
Can you not put yourselves in their shoes, see their point of view and consider removing your imperial guards from that devastated country (without securing the oil for your "national interests")? I believe that the people of Iraq can figure it out for themselves and recommit to building themselves a peaceful future without your interference. I understand that most CDers do believe this, but work on your fellows, okay?
… while being TAZED
daveg90275 -- I believe what you mention is the perception of waking up,
Sound's like the light at the end of the tunnel
This war without end is like the car culture and like the erosion of our industrial base. They are designs of the "laissez-faire" capitalists that used to be acceptable because there were no viable alternatives but are now proven catastrophes in the face of a clearly superior alternative: Rebuilding the US industrial base with dispersed small enterprises, the local independent small farmer, craftsman and merchant. Maintaining local, economically independent/secure, politically independent/secure, sustainable, prosperous economies and societies is the popular agenda that eliminates the capitalists and their pathetically stupid ideas of war without end, maximum fossil gluttony, worldwide labor exploitation, etc. The popular agenda will become ageless. There will be no changing it. It will be like stone buildings, and last for thousands of years.
since1492 sez: "America is no longer a country. It is an empire and the war is inconsequential to the leaders of the empire ... "
With all due respect, this illusion of war is very consequential. Without it, the whole charade crumbles.
Propaganda alert:
Kalet sez: "The military discounts the numbers, saying that a longer view is necessary to understand what has been happening."
Notice the military doesn't "dispute" the numbers. It "discounts" the lives of human beings. They are the truly inconsequential.
The writer has to get out of the box and stop looking at this as a war against Iraq. What's happening is empire expansion. America is no longer a country. It is an empire and the war is inconsequential to the leaders of the empire, namely our current batch of political D.C. whores and corporate America.
Hoa binh
"Just around the corner"! Seems to me I heard that song before. 1928-1932 Herbert Hoover coined that famous phrase.
Prosperity was just around the corner. Funny, it never got to the corner. Now we hear the same Republican CRAP.
Another thing, how do we know what surrender looks like? Who is the enemy chief that will come forward with the white flag? Who will sign the surrender treaty? What the hell are they talking about?
We saved a lot more lives when we got out of Viet Nam and we can do the same thing now.