1 Boring Old Man

^{Maybe 100. We’ve been in South Korea, we’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it’s fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping, and motivating people every single day.}

^{John McCain}

In the first, John McCain is suggesting a long-termed occupation of Iraq, a U.S. presence in the Middle East, because al Qaeda is "recruiting, equipping, and motivating people every single day." He uses the analogies of Japan and Korea – places where we have maintained a resident military force. In Japan, it was an Army of Occupation [I know that’s true because all of the little toys when I grew up said "made in occupied Japan" on the back]. That force was there because Japan had been an enemy that had plunged us into a devastating World War and we didn’t want that to happen again. But it also gave us a presence in the Far East. Did our occupation of Japan stop anything from happening in China, Burma, Korea, Viet Nam, Indonesia, etc.? In Korea, we stayed after a War we were asked to join to keep North Korea from invading South Korea. That seems to have worked. But did our forces in Korea stop other things from happening in the far east? In both cases, we might say we were a deterrent force. Maybe we stopped even worse things from happening in the region. But Iraq is a different story. We weren’t at war with Saddam Hussein. He was not a threat to us. We could have easily continued to pressure him with embargos, other means, and remained safe. Threatening war was enough. McCain is suggesting a long termed Army of Occupation would be a deterrent to Al Qaeda. Well, the opposite seems to be the case. We’ve had an Army of Occupation there for five years and it’s hardly speculation that it has promoted the growth of al Qaeda. I can think of no argument that our invasion of Iraq or that our subsequent occupation of Iraq is a good way to fight al Qaeda. All arguments I can think of point to the opposite conclusion.

^{Success will have been achieved when Iraq is a stable, representative state that controls its own territory, is oriented toward the West, and is an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia. This has been said over and over. Why won’t war critics hear it?}

^{Fredrick Kagan}

Whereas McCain’s argument for staying is based on inappropriate analogies from the past, Kagan’s suggesting something that is a snapshot of the Neoconservative fantasy that developed at the American Enterprise Institute in the 1990’s. We invade Iraq and unseat/kill Hussein. The Iraqis greet us with open arms and form a pro-US government that joins us in our War on "radical Islam." That’s what they thought would happen. That’s what they still think they can make happen. The chances of success come under the heading, "when pigs fly."

^{…by winning, we will send a powerful message that the momentum is on our side. And it will rally the Muslim world to us. It will also create a huge influence in the Middle East. Think about the creation of the democracy in the historic center of the Middle East with the third-largest oil reserves in the world. If we have a functioning democracy in Iraq, that’s an ally in the war on terror, a counterweight to mullahs Iran and to Assad in Syria, this will create a very hopeful center of reform and energy for reform throughout the Middle East."}

^{Karl Rove}

Like McCain, Karl Rove was not involved in the culture that produced the Iraq War. But he’s obviously lived among those who have carried the torch. His comments are the most absurd of the bunch. Can anyone even imagine "by winning, we will send a powerful message that the momentum is on our side. And it will rally the Muslim world to us."? Besides the fact that we can’t win in the naive sense he’s using the word, the notion of the Muslim World rallying to us is beyond ludicrous. But then he moves from hopeful fantasy into the realm of the sublime – a dreamscape riddled with holes. He assumes that a democracy will be our ally [Iran is a democracy]. He assumes that the Iraqi oil reserves will be available to the U.S. He assumes that a democracy will join us against terrorists and be a "counterweight" to Syria and Iran. He’s preaching the gospel of a dream he picked up from others, and it sounds like the Neoconservative version of John Lennon’s song, "Imagine."

• The curtain is up on our reasons for invading Iraq. The WMD/al Qaeda ties story is now off the table and admittedly false.
• The "Surge" was a way to hold onto their dreams. When they say, "the Surge is working," they mean that we are still occupying Iraq – ergo, the real goal is being met.
• Somewhere along the line, John McCain was brought into the fold and plans to continue the Neoconservatives’ dreams.

The only solution, of course, seems to be defeating the Neoconservatives. But that’s a trap too, because we’re keeping them alive by joining the fight, much as they’re doing in Iraq. I think that it is more productive to look closely at the premises that underlie this whole scenario. These are the children of the "cold war." We all are. The story was two "super-powers" deadlocked in a power struggle that had no solution. When that deadlock was finally broken, the Neoconservatives wanted to establish a new version of the power struggle, only one that puts us on top – the United States and Israel versus the rest of the Middle East. At issue, is this kind of polarization required for the world to function? Our Neoconservative colleagues seem to assume it is necessary. Their solution is winning, as naive a solution as Kagan’s vision of success in Iraq. In their system, radical Islam replaces Communism, and we just upgraded to The Cold War, Version 2.0.

I can see why they say that, but I don’t accept it as the only possibility. With the Russians, we were dealing with their leaders, not their people. The Kremlin might have been thinking about World Communism, but the Russian people were thinking about eating [and drinking from what I saw]. Here, we are dealing with a religion – one that has been intimately involved with government from the beginning. It’s a very different situation. The jihadists are fighting for a Caliphate  [ خلافة ], a traditional form of government in Islamic history that we would call a theocracy. For the Sunni, the Caliph would be elected. In the Shia tradition, the Caliph would come from Mohamed’s bloodline. The Caliphate was ended in 1924 by Attaturk, transferring the Caliph’s powers to the National Assembly of Turkey. Opposing the idea of a Caliphate are the modern States that were central parts of the old Ottoman Empire which have varying degrees of adherence to this idea. We understandably see the jihadists as Terrorists, because of their methods. But they see themselves as following their version of the word of Allah, representing the extreme position of a single, unified Islamic World. It’s unclear to me if they mean world as the traditional Middle East or world as Planet Earth.

I think the Neoconservatives analogized the Middle Eastern World with the Communist Bloc. They thought unseating Hussein would open a floodgate like it did in Russia. By the time Communism fell, it was a revolution waiting to happen. The ideological proponents of Communism were long gone, only the power base remained. A small straw broke the camel’s back. Whatever the Caliphate represents to al Qaeda, it, or some theocratic version of it, is a part of the Islamic cosmology for all Moslems. Kagan’s "is oriented toward the West, and is an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia." is simply not going to occur. In fact, it’s what they think we’re trying to do – destroy Islam. All Islam is militant about the religion itself. The idea that ‘westernism’ might corrupt Islam is widespread [and not totally incorrect]. Our religious fundamentalists think the same thing, that ‘westernism’ will corrupt us.

Examples of compromises between fundamentalist Islam and modern life are everywhere, including Iran and Syria to greater or lesser degrees. At issue is finding a way to allow Islam and the west to live in a state of detente. It would be naive to suggest that this will occur without conflict, posturing, or even war. But it’s ludicrous to think that we can create "a functioning democracy in Iraq, that’s an ally in the war on terror, a counterweight to mullahs Iran and to Assad in Syria, this will create a very hopeful center of reform and energy for reform throughout the Middle East." It is reasonable to assume that we can enter negotiations with the Middle Eastern States searching for a detente, and that we can isolate our actual fighting to the people who actually attacked us. In my mind, the biggest problem we have right now is Pakistan, the person we need to be talking to in Iraq is Moqtada al-Sadr, our committment to Israel is unchanged though we are not the foreign policy arm of the Israelis, and the Palastinians got the royal shaft and need to be thought about very carefully. We cannot expect not to be demonized if we act like demons. There were a million other choices that would have been better than invading Iraq, but we can’t undo that now. Likewise, fighting the Neoconservatives is unproductive. Right now, our challenge is constructing a more effective alternative to the failed foreign policy of Mr. Bush and friends. We’re not fighting a war. We’re just fighting…