Is it possible to take the same old ideas, dust them off and present them as something new and curative for whatever ails the nation? Congressional Republicans seem to think so. Whether it’s domestic issues, a bellicose foreign policy or a rewrite of the Bush years, it’s déjà vu all over again. Oddly a lot of voters seem to be persuaded by time-worn sloganeering.
Before his speech on the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, Heather on Fox pressured Press Secretary Gibbs about whether President Obama would credit President Bush for a “surge: Conservatives like to equate with ‘success’ in that country. After his speech Republicans felt the subject wasn’t properly addressed while many Democrats thought the president was overly generous in his assessment of the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq.
Like it or not, however, the United States is stuck with the reality of that decision and all that portends for the forseeable future. But crediting “the surge” alone with something resembling success is a product of neo-con rhetoric. Before troop levels were increased the Sunni “awakening” had driven Al Qaeda from its territory, a significant development that turned things around locally and an effort reinforced with U. S. financial aid.
When we undertake to reconfigure another land with religious and political traditions unlike our own, a tendency to over-simplify the results must be resisted, not politicized by warring factions here at home. Paul Wolfowitz is still singing the same refrain as if invading Iraq was one of our nation’s shining moments. You may remember him for claiming that the war would be cost-free, paid for with Iraqi oil. But in fact our ill-fated experiment in nation-building was financed with borrowed funds and has cost us dearly in terms of both treasure and lives while Iraqi Kurds are busily signing contracts with international oil companies to enhance their own financial interests not to offset our expenses.
Wolfowitz is right about one thing, though. We have a responsibility to mitigate the terrible devastation we visited upon Iraq and its people, only he probably wouldn’t put it quite that way. In any case we have a lot to answer for; however if at some far distant moment in time Iraq morphs into a Shia-Sunni-Kurdish democratic phenomenon, historians will be bound to say “well done, America.” But for now the miracle is not in sight.
But regardless of the moral, ethical and political implications of engaging in foreign conflicts we should at least be willing to find ways to pay for them. Deficit hawks are long on cutting entitlements and retaining tax cuts for the non-job producing wealthy and short on putting our money where are troops and war materiel are. Surely it’s time, if we think our military efforts are worthwhile, to fund them on our own dime.
