AJC.com > Opinion > Woman to Woman > Archives > 2007 > September > 01
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Are Americans too impatient in Iraq?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
Yes — Americans who work in the White House, that is. The refusal to give diplomacy its due, the rush to war … who’s being impatient here? This administration has been quick to claim false proof: “We know where the (WMDs) are,” quick to claim victory: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” quick to think stabilization was around the corner: “…they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”
Bush and Company’s bold statements turned out to be wrong, like so many things in this nobly fought, badly thought-out war. What did we think sustained commitment meant? Hard to say. Yet we didn’t think it meant a war lasting longer than America’s participation in World War Two. We didn’t think it meant 3000+ Americans dead and rising, over $450 billion in costs by the end of September 2007, troops pulling multiple tours to make up for understaffing. We didn’t think that being “greeted as liberators” meant an increase in the ranks of Al-Qaeda while true democracy remains elusive, in a land so wracked with cross currents of sectarian violence that it often resembles, already, an outbreak of civil war.
We have been so starved for a turnaround in Iraq that The Brookings Institute report my colleague cites is a breath of fresh air, giving much anecdotal evidence of positive developments. Yet it also rhetorically asks: “How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part?”
This is the 3 a.m. question. Without a draft or a “war tax,” Iraq might feel like a direct hit only to those who actually are risking their lives, and their families. Yet our stinging conscience calls so many of us to outrage.
In warning President Bush about the consequences of an invasion, Colin Powell told him, in essence, “You break it, you own it.” So here we are, shards at our feet, critically obligated to both the Iraqi people and our troops .With so many lives on the line, demanding that our leaders demonstrate better judgment isn’t impatience. It’s a moral imperative.
Commentary
By Shaunti Feldhahn
An Associated Press Poll found 60 percent of Americans “lose their cool” if they have to wait in line more than fifteen minutes — and only 7 percent could stay on hold for twenty. No wonder Americans aren’t exercising the Iraq patience that we knew would be required from the beginning.
President Bush told us that Iraq action would not be quick. He emphasized it “could be longer and more difficult than some predict. And helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment.” Words Hilary Clinton might remind herself of, since she voted for the war “with conviction.”
What did we think “sustained commitment” meant? A few months? In 2003, I was bewildered to hear television commentators discussing whether we’d need to be there for more than a year. It’s like we have a subconscious sci-fi assumption that we’ll just shoot a few phaser guns, subdue the bad guys, and have the whole thing neatly wrapped up by the end of the hour-long episode.
We don’t just need a dose of patience: we need a dose of reality.
Thankfully, two high-profile critics on Iraq have also provided some surprising encouragement with a recent New York Times article entitled, “Stability in Iraq: A War We Just Might Win.” Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the liberal Brookings Institution say the troop surge is working. Civilian casualties have dropped by a third, military morale is up, and American troop levels can decline in places like Mosul because the Iraqis lead security.
Unfortunately, a new Gallup Poll showed most Americans want troops out by April 2008.
And too many Democrat leaders are demanding timetables as well, even though timetables invite chaos. As Pollack put it in an interview last year, “[If] people become confirmed in their suspicion that the United States is not going to be there to prevent civil war, they are to going to start making decisions today to prepare for the eventuality of civil war tomorrow.”
He added, “That is how civil wars start.”
There’s a new self-governing nation out there that is desperately trying to learn how to stand on its own and avoid civil war. Americans owe it to the Iraqi people to learn patience. Rapidly.