One Bad Week

Two fascinating articles in the Times this week which taken together ought to form a solid indictment not only of the execution of this fool's errand (I mean the US excursion in Iraq) but of the theory behind it — namely, that it's a fine idea to attempt the violent imposition of a political culture. In the first article we find a jarring tally of Iraqi civilian deaths resulting from the invasion and its aftermath, known to some as "the occupation" and to others as "the counterinsurgency." Call it what you like; the numbers couldn't care less. 24,865 — that's the number. Nearly 25,000 men, women, and children. Let's break it down farther: 11,281 men; 1,198 women; 1,332 children. More than a third of these were killed by American forces directly. Almost half were lost in Baghdad alone. Put that in perspective. I grew up in a town of slightly less than 5,000; that's as though every man, woman, and child in my hometown had been shot or blown up or stabbed or otherwise murdered — and then the same thing happened four more times in nearby towns of the same size. Think of it: everyone: killed. And you can say, by way of diminishing your sense of responsibility as an American, that only a third of them were killed by our troops. But the truth is that each and every death was a result, direct or indirect, of the US invasion.

The second article concerns the Iraqi constitution — specifically, the most recent draft of the document, in which the role of women in the new Iraqi society is restricted to bring it more fully into compliance with Sh'aria, or Islamic law. If "liberty" in the western tradition is your stated goal, this can hardly be considered a victory. In fact it may be something much worse. Women in post-invasion Iraq could actually end up with fewer rights than they had under Saddam Hussien. This doesn't diminish the brutality of the former regime, but it does cast a grim light on American efforts. Currently Iraq is shaping up not as a bastion of enlightened Middle Eastern democracy but as a second, and more sectarian, Iran — all at a price tag of well over 30,000 lives. Talk about not getting your money's worth. Though I guess at least Haliburton and the Shiite mullahs will go home happy.

Other bad news from Iraq — and it's not easy keeping up — include the assassination of two Sunni members of the constitutional drafting panel and the revelation that the US tampered with the much-lauded "free-and-fair" Iraqi elections (see The New Yorker, July 25, 2005). There are even allegations of ballot stuffing. Once again you have to wonder what the US government means when it says it wants to teach the world democracy. Did anyone caucus the Latin Americans on that?

This is just the latest. It has been a long ugly journey. The road is getting worse, and there's no end in sight. And the worst is that it was all predictable. Not just predictable: predicted. Forecast, even, and with an accuracy weathermen can only envy. Few in the mainstream took any kind of heed at the time. Even fewer take an interest in looking back now. But the information was all there — the assessments of intertribal strife, the seeping religious fundametalism, the predictions of powerplays by factions with ties to Syria and Iran. Some of it came from or own intelligence services. Most if not all of it appeared in readily available English-language media. And if I could read it, then certainly members of Congress and the Administration could read it. Which means that they all could have known. Which means — given who they are, and what they do — that, really, they should have known.

We can all keep playing silly games over this. We can stick to the slogans, we can scratch our heads earnestly. We can punch the well-we-can't-leave-now-with-the-job-half-done clock a few more times. (Even liberals love to punch this particular clock — it spares them from uttering the dirty "withdrawal" word, which will inevitably lead someone to utter the dirty "wimp" word in response.) We can take the David Brooks-slash-John Tierney route, and frown concernedly while holding fast to our highbrow-homespun optimism, and expressing naive faith in the latest baby step, or report of water being turned back on in some remote village. Go ahead: it's all well and good. Just let the rest of us know what number it will take — how much death and chaos, how many failed policies, how many squandered opportunities, how grim the outlook will have to get — before you start having the honest adult conversation about what a collosal fuck-up this entire enterprise has been. Should we check back next year when the number of Iraqi dead has topped 35,000? The following year, when it's almost 50,000? Will it take 100,000? Half a million? Will another Taliban-style regime have to come to power, perhaps even be elected (though perhaps not altogether legitimately — the Iraqis are being trained by us, after all)? Will it take an Arab civil war, pitting Shiite Iran and the new Shiite Iraq against the rest of the Sunni Muslim Arab world, and possibly against the Kurds as well (though by then they may be too busy waging a quiet war at the Turkish border)? Will we have to start drafting young Americans, driving up the domestic death toll as well, and — in all likelihood, giving the steeply declining stomach shown on the home front for this war — start another bitter civil cold war of our own?

Just let us know what it will take.

Or, on the other hand, we could start having the adult conversation now, and maybe spare everyone some grief.