In Defense of Bugging Out

For some months, the conventional wisdom has been that whether or not you thought the occupation of Iraq was a good idea, now that we're there, "we've got to get it right." More troops, more money, better leadership, better decisions -- whatever it takes. We are in a "test of resolve," a "time to come together and meet this great challenge we face." We can't "abandon" Iraq until it's "stabilized" and "democratic."

Columnist Cynthia Tucker, a critic of the war, expressed this clearly Monday, in reaction to the news that the Bush administration has reversed field and is going to, in the vernacular of Texan Molly Ivins, bug out. "If we clear out too soon, we may be setting the stage for Armageddon in the Middle East before 2008," writes Tucker. "And we'll be sending a message to hundreds of American families that their sons and daughters died for nothing."

Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom is dead wrong. It is based on the same confabulation of circular logic, paternalistic neocolonialism, faulty intelligence, fuzzy morality and lack of historical perspective that sucked us into the vortex of war in Indochina 40 years ago. And when it naively supposes that the mainstream hopes for this war -- a defeat for tyranny and terrorism, the spread of peace and democracy -- match up with the goals of those who are actually at the helm of power, it completely collapses.

The documents, arguments and decisions underpinning the White House's big roll of the dice in Mesopotamia make it clear that this war is about projecting raw power to remind the world who is boss and accrue our rewards accordingly. Arab democracy, nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the war on terrorism have always been afterthoughts if not fig leafs for this invasion. The conventional wisdom turns a blind eye to the layer upon layer of phony motives the Administration has lobbed out to defend the war since its marketing campaign was launched in August 2002.

First pitched as a roundhouse blow in response to 9/11, the rationale for invading Iraq was amended by the President at various times to be a mercy mission for the Iraqi people; a defense against the use or proliferation of certain classes of weapons; or a way to bring enlightenment to the benighted Arab world. Skeptics, bless their hearts, thought oil, Israel and hooking up Bechtel and Halliburton with juicy reconstruction contracts were maybe a tad more prominent in the thinking of the war's architects.

Actually, some war supporters are clearer on this issue of motives. They don't much care that Iraq's blowhard dictator turned out to be more Wizard of Oz than Adolph Hitler, that his vaunted weapons programs was a joke and his huge army little more than a week's cannon fodder for the U.S. juggernaut. Nor do they waste much time worrying about the fact that Saddam Hussein had never had an alliance with Al Qaeda, but had been supported for decades by the United States. Many of these folks agreed with neoconservative Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, who said, "Every 10 years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."

There's a certain consistency in this inconsistency, which amounts to something along the lines of, "I don't care what goes on over there -- gas lines, suicide bombings, human rights abuses -- as long as you make sure no more of it gets back here."

But the conventional wisdom is much different. Essentially liberal, it has changed little since the 60s, when it was the position of a generation of Democrats and moderate Republicans who naively endorsed taking the nation down into a muddy trench called Vietnam. This tortuous stance is doomed to failure, predicated as it is on employing brute power and overwhelming firepower in a far-off land to forge something as delicate and diaphanous as democracy and a lasting social compact.