Comments Elsewhere

Michael: “Iraq is fucked and I don’t know how to unfuck it. The occupation has been a disaster. If the United States left now there would be a three-way civil war.”

The best that we can do is leave now. Maybe there will be a three-way civil war and maybe there won’t; there’s no good way for us to know. But that would only count as reason against pulling out immediately if you thought that continuing occupation by American soldiers is going to make that situation better rather than worse.

I mean, could you tell that girl that the occupation is doing more good than harm?

thehim: “For the U.S. to have been successful in a situation like Iraq, we would have had to make huge strides, even before the invasion, to build up that trust.”

For the U.S. to have been “successful” in a situation like Iraq, we would have needed not to slaughter thousands of civilians, even if G.W. had not lied through his teeth, even if he strictly adhered to the truth and spent months on a P.R. campaign. It’s not like the CIA installed a trap-door underneath Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party commanders that would have let us “go in” to Iraq without killing people left and right. Modern total warfare may have victors, but it has no “successes.”