Nov. 19, 2006

By Harry T. Cook

The argument is that if the United States removes its military forces from Iraq, civil war and chaos will break out. Really? What do you call what’s going on there now if not civil war and chaos? And let us recall what occasioned all that unshirted hell.

In March 2003 after an ideological run-up that pre-dates 9/11 by at least four years, the United States mounted a pre-emptive invasion upon a sovereign nation – admittedly governed by a despot, yet not even a distant threat to the United States or its proper interests. The invasion was undertaken with far too few and far too poorly equipped troops with the result that, contrary to the famous strut across the deck of the aircraft carrier, the mission (whatever it was) has not been accomplished. Far from it. As many as 150,000 Iraqis have died. Nearly 2,850 American military persons have died, and the killing continues.

It is said that we dare not get out as things in Iraq will get worse. It is also said that if we don’t get out, things will get worse. As Oliver Hardy might have said, “Another fine mess you’ve got us into.”

All the post-election, lovey-dovey talk about bipartisanship must not be allowed to blunt the urgent effort to extract U.S. troops from Iraq and to work cooperatively with what allies the U.S. may have left to help the country that we have virtually destroyed salvage what remains of its economy, infrastructure and nationhood.

A joke (?) has been going around the Internet about a new name for Iraq. One wag proposed “Rumsfeldistan.” My suggestion is “Quagmireistan,” because the U.S. seems to have forgotten the lesson of Vietnam. That lesson? A very old one: Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword – especially when their swords have been drawn in the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The geopolitical argument is made that if the U.S. retreats from Iraq, it would leave Iran in charge of the region. That would almost assuredly be the case, and it would have been really nice if the geniuses who got us into this morass would have figured that out before the invasion. The hubris of it all, as articulated by Dick Cheney with his vision of our troops being greeted by rose petals and hosannas, is or ought to be actionable.

Meanwhile, though, the next Congress will have to get serious about ending the Iraq episode of our national life. I don’t know that any other world power would volunteer to touch what’s left of Iraq with a barge pole. You couldn’t allow Israel to deal with it. Just ask the southern Lebanese. You wouldn’t want Vladimir Putin to move in, either. How about Liechtenstein?

What seems certain, though, is that the U.S. military, which can do some things actually pretty well, is not the outfit to settle things down in Iraq. The U.S. needs to go hat in hand to Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and other middling powers of the region and beg them, if necessary, to clean up the mess our meddling has made. And now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is proposing one-on-one talks with the U.S., which overtures the Bush Administration has imprudently waved away. Talking beats fighting.

The late G. Mennen Williams, the governor of Michigan from 1949 to 1961 and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Kennedy Administration, took his job seriously and did it well, but he got himself in hot water when he uttered the phrase “Africa for Africans.” But Williams was right. And now someone needs to stand up and say, “Iraq for Iraqis.”

What befell what was once known as South Vietnam after the U.S. withdrawal out through the roof of the embassy was, to say the least, unpleasant. Much hash was settled as the North Vietnamese took their revenge on their southern countrymen who had been perceived as being in league with U.S. aggressors.

Likewise, absent some forceful intervention by, say, Egypt or a (excuse the term) coalition of Middle Eastern nations, the Sunnis and Shiites of Iraq will play out their own vengeance tragedy – either in slow motion if the U.S. persists in its occupation of that country or more rapidly if and when our forces are withdrawn. It seems inevitable, and that blood will be upon our hands for many years to come.

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ENDNOTE: The National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) at its annual gathering earlier this week took up the issue of who is welcome to receive communion at mass. Guess who’s not invited? Married couples who use so-called “artificial” contraception and gay Catholics who are not celibate. The idea is that those who presume to eat of the host and sip the chalice must be in a “state of holiness.” Laying barriers in the way of conception, other than abstention during fertility, is verboten. Physics and chemistry are taboo. Mathematics, not so much. And as for gay and lesbian persons enjoying the pleasure of sexual intimacy, God forbids it.

I had the great privilege of covering the NCCB from 1979 to 1983 when I reported religious affairs for the Detroit Free Press. The episcopal council was then distinguished by the presence of such estimable leaders as Cardinals Joseph Bernardin of Chicago and John Dearden of Detroit, of such courageous bishops as Raymond Hunthausen and Thomas Gumbleton. They labored over the issues of economic and social justice, of war and peace. Their deliberations made headlines that mattered to the world.

What are their successors doing? Talking about sex as if they hadn’t enough of it with the pedophile scandals that are still ongoing. Iraq? What’s, where’s Iraq? Dearden and Bernardin would shake their heads in wonderment. They might suggest that their confreres turn in their breviaries to Psalm 59: 9, where they would read: You, Yahweh. You laugh at them. You laugh them to scorn.

© Copyright 2006, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

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