Should we get out of Iraq? Something that seemed inconceivable a few months ago as a foreign policy failure of staggering proportions, now seems something that some sensible people are urging. Including military analyst Andrew Bacevich, in this op-ed, that compares the US "descent into dishonor" in Iraq to the French campaign in Algeria:

Day by day, the evidence mounts that an ugly war is turning uglier. U.S. and coalition troop losses, which have again spiked upward, provide one measure of that ugliness. The ratcheting up of American firepower and the climbing toll of Iraqi dead, many of them evidently innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire, provide a second. But there is a third measure, perhaps the most troubling of all: hints that the discipline of U.S. forces is beginning to fray.

Indiscipline, lawlessness and the excessive use of force will not guarantee
victory in Iraq; indeed, the reverse is true.

The French experience in Algeria stands as a warning: Down that road lies not
only defeat but also dishonor.

Bob Dreyfuss highlights more US officials calling for getting out as fast as the US can here.

[Thanks to reader JR for the heads up on the Bacevich article].

Post-Script: When I read articles like this, I am so outraged, it's hard to think straight. It is clear that the people who conned us into this war, including Richard Perle, Ahmad Chalabi and Doug Feith, should go to jail. Even watching the coverage of the abuses on that White House cheerleader Fox News the past few days (I was in the Midwest, captive of other people) it seems to me that Americans will not long have the stomach for seeing the monstrous deeds that some US forces and intelligence have committed in Iraq.

Whatever anyone thought invading Iraq would get us (and oh yeah, forgot to create the conditions that would allow us to stabilize it and win), it's not worth it to turn our own forces into the kinds of monsters one hears about in the war crimes trials at the Hague. It's only a matter of degree. [I've been assured by a friend in the intel business who's been in Iraq that he's just as horrified by these revelations as everyone else]. But I would be interested to know what they think, given their past talk about the "school girl" rules that US intelligence had to operate under in the era following the Church committee hearings. But surely between the Geneva Conventions and the 'schoolgirl' rules and what we are reading about in the New Yorker, there must be some middle ground, right? What happened? When does the tremendous pressure the US military and intelligence is under to produce more actionable intelligence translate into human rights abuses and torture of detainees? Are the rules changing again?

What does it come down to? It's trying to remember what was the point of this whole exercise of invading Iraq, which had less to do with Al Qaeda than at least five other governments. To protect this country. To get rid of an admittedly very evil man who had aspired to possess weapons of mass destruction and invaded another big oil producing country twelve years ago. To show that the US was willing to take losses, to project American power into the heart of the Arab world. But isn't it clear that after a year of demonstrating how stretched thin and desperate we are in Iraq, that what we have wrought is so incredibly destructive for Americans, that the Iraq misadventure has demonstrated weakness, failure, incompetence, arrogance, and now -- this -- that, in the eyes of most in Iraq and I would bet most people in the Middle East, we are perceived as hardly any better and arguably worse than the power we overthrew in Baghdad? What was the point of this little exercise? Whatever it was, at some point, better sooner than later, one has to count one's losses and go home. This administration clearly doesn't know how to climb its way out of a paperbag. It doesn't have any fresh ideas for how to fix the situation in Iraq that doesn't have us reinstalling Saddam's Republican Guard or turning our own personnel into war criminals. Clearly we've got to change our regime. And put Perle, Chalabi and the others on trial. Simply having them lose their jobs will not reveal all they did to get us in this half century rare world class screw up.

Post-Post Script: Will the humiliation of what we've witnessed at Abu Ghraib (and what Hersh says we will see more of in coming days) lead Americans to reject the extra-judicial gray area the US has waded into post-9/11 in Guantanamo and elsewhere? Do we really want our interrogators and our soldiers and our government to feel beyond the scope of international law, the constitution, commonly understood ethical behavior and the law? Will it remain such an abstract notion? Will we remember why restraints were put on these institutions in the past?

For before Maj. Gen. Antonio Tagaba reported on the abuse at Abu Ghraib earlier this year, apparently a director of the US facility in Cuba, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D Miller, investigated reports of abuse in the Baghdad prison and wrote that US MPs should act as "enablers" for US military intelligence officials. "In late August and early September 2003, a team from Guantanamo overseen by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller visited Iraq to advise U.S. prison operations there. Among its recommendations were that military police guards act as "enablers" for interrogations, Taguba reported," the Post reports.

Moreover, doesn't the fact that nobody has lost their jobs, nobody has been fired, nobody has gone to prison, or worse, so far in this case, indicate that something is seriously wrong with the follow through by the US military in investigating these reports of abuse? Isn't there an air of condoning this sort of thing, until it becomes a PR problem? [or a career problem for someone like Sanchez?] Shouldn't we have expected more action in a military system with clear chains of command and photographs for g-d's sake and three internal military investigations conducted several months ago by now? And if we haven't seen any action until the 60 Minutes report, what does that indicate? A serious lack of will, it would seem to me. Should Rumsfeld be implicated for failing to condemn this?

Posted by Laura at May 3, 2004 07:48 PM