War in Iraq: Has the proposed withdrawal of allied troops from Iraq come too late?

Yes

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by Carmi Turchick

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We lost this war by the third day of the invasion, so yes I would say four years on is a bit on the late side.

That we could achieve our goals with the numbers of soldiers we had was predicated on the absurd idea that we would be welcomed by cheering crowds and flower petals. This idea was absurd because there had never been such a welcome of a foreign invading army from a culture with a long history of animosity with the invaded country. Never once. And we had been bombing Iraq on average every three days for the five years leading up to the invasion, which can tend to make you less popular. We had also been keeping them from getting the medicines they needed to cure diarrhea and the equipment they needed to repair their water system so the water would be clean again. Both of which lead to hundreds of thousands of children dying, which again tends to make a country less popular.

No expert anywhere would have claimed that we could occupy Iraq and not be welcomed and face an insurgency and win with as many soldiers as we had to go in with. We did not have more soldiers, as it is our military has been described as "broken" because of the strain of maintaining the force level we have.

What was supposed to happen in the Bush fantasy was the magical welcoming and the rapid conversion of the Iraqi military into our willing allies who would put some nice fellow in power and wave merrily goodbye to us a few months later. That such a thing had never come close to happening before in all of world history did not trouble them enough to make plans for what to do if it did not happen this time either.

Three days in it was clear that the Iraqi military was not coming over to us and that the only people cheering in the streets were members of the previously brutally persecuted Iraqi Communist Party. Three days in it was clear what was going to happen, an ever growing insurgency, and that we did not have enough soldiers to win against the foes we would face. Three days in it was clear that we had no plans for what to do now, no course was set and yet we spent the next three years being asked to "stay the course" in Iraq. Three days in it was clear that the only question was what cost in lives and treasure would be paid before we left Iraq in a shambles.

Sure, Bush and his administration did lots of things to make things worse for us in Iraq over the next four years but the basic math is simple. We need 650,000 soldiers for this fight, according to the book our current top general in Iraq wrote. We have less than 25% of that available.

Here is what makes it even worse; no matter what happens in the war we would still lose when we left. Any regime that was friends with us would be ousted in a few years time at most and the insurgents we had subdued would just come back again. No government that likes the US can hold power long in a country where the vast majority of the populace hates our guts. We cannot stay forever, and once we leave we lose no matter what happened before that. We lack the troops for a temporary win, and a long term win is simply impossible.

Every life and every dollar that this war has wasted since the fourth day on has been spent to keep Bush from having to admit that we lost his stupid war that he lied like hell to get us into. For no other purpose. Just so Bush can avoid saying he lost. Brave men and women die so Bush can be a coward.

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