Hell No, We Won't Go

The topic came up today in conversation -- what will get us out of Iraq? The consensus seemed to be that there is no way we will leave voluntarily -- i.e., there is no way the U.S. government will simply decide, one fine day, that we've squandered enough lives and money over there, and order the troops home. This conclusion, by the way, was not contingent on any given person either becoming, or not becoming, president in January 2009. I think by now people are starting to realize that... well, first of all, McCain is just another Bush II when it comes to foreign policy. We won't even feel a slight bump when the baton passes from one hand to the next. Hillary is too heavily invested in the war to simply leave; she has already made that perfectly clear. Plus, hasn't she always secretly wanted to be a "war president"? I daresay the answer is yes. And Obama can't get us out of there even if he wants to. This is finally starting to sink in among some of his supporters, in fact. Which basically means that, between Hillary and Obama, there are no significant differences, assuming there ever were. Some people cling to the notion that he will get us out of Iraq, whereas she might or might not. Well, forget about that fond delusion -- neither of them can get us out of there. The presidency, as powerful as it is -- or seems to be -- is no match for the vested interests that got us into this war in the first place, and is certainly no match for the interests that want us to stay over there. We have to remember -- follow the money, as always. All the other reasons are no more than propaganda.

So what does it all mean? Are we doomed to remain over in that shithole forever, getting slowly bitten to death by a million ducks? Well, no. The favored notion as to what will finally get us out of there was: bankruptcy, pure and simple. In other words, one of these days we will simply run out of resources to devote to the war, and no one will be willing to lend us any (the latter process is already well underway, please note). Now, this turn of events will not be reached until considerable pain is experienced on the "domestic front" -- with ever-accelerating inflation, accelerating depreciation of the dollar, cuts in domestic spending, tax hikes -- you know, the same old round of symptoms that always accompany follies overseas, not to mention the inevitable ratcheting up of totalitarianism. And yes, there will be demands that something be done. But our leaders have their faces set like flint on Iraq, and there is no one out there who has the fortitude to change that. (Where will Ron Paul be when we really need him?) But our resources are not infinite -- and they are appearing more finite with every passing day. So a simple petering-out of capital could well be what closes this sorry chapter in our history. Now of course this would also have the somewhat unpleasant side effect of being the end of the United States as "the" superpower, or even "a" superpower. We would be tossed into third worldism faster than Lindsay Lohan getting tossed into rehab. And yes, it might well be the last war we ever fight -- and that could be good news. After single-handedly bailing out Europe in World Wars I and II, and holding off the communists for another 45 years, we may see the American Empire brought to its knees by the Babylonians. How Biblical it all seems... but that is entirely apropos, since it's the Evangelicals who seem to care more about this matter than anyone else. What will they do when they find out that we're on the wrong side of prophesy? All jump off a cliff into the ocean? Dream on...

There is another possibility, of course, and that is that we are simply thrown out, the way we were thrown out of Vietnam. The problem is, the entire Arab world is still much less formidable an enemy than the combined Army of North Vietnam and Viet Cong were -- as incredible as that seems. In fact, we owe our continued presence in Iraq to Arab haplessness as much as any other single factor. I doubt we could have done what we did in Iraq anywhere else in the world without suffering much more serious, and rapid, consequences. So in that sense, even the "tense standoff" our forces are experiencing over there at present is an illusion. In a real world, with a competent enemy, we would have been driven back into the Indian Ocean years ago.

Now, the possibility that I have _not_ mentioned is the one that, perhaps more than any other single factor, precipitated our drawdown from Vietnam -- namely the American media, and their genius for rabble-rousing (when they put their minds to it). The comparison is particularly paradoxical because, back then, the liberal American media were raising hell about a war started and perpetuated (up until 1969) by liberals, namely JFK and LBJ. This time, it's the liberal media vs. a "conservative" president, and you would think it would be a cakewalk -- if that is the term. Problem is, we don't have the one thing that energized the media and the public more than anything else during the Vietnam era, namely the draft. It's one thing to shed innocent blood when said innocent blood volunteers to be shed. It's quite another thing to throw the innocent into a volcano against their will -- and this is what was being done in Vietnam.

I have to note that the Vietnam war came to end not long after the U.S. Army switched over to being all-volunteer. Coincidence? I don't think so. While one might think that the all-volunteer era would have made people more favorable toward the military, it also had the effect of re-calibrating our formulae for going to war and staying at war. People are simply not going to volunteer to be sent into a hellhole, and Vietnam was -- again, thanks to the media -- painted, in no uncertain terms, as the hellhole that it actually was. Today's media have been comparatively remiss in pointing out, and picturing, how truly dreadful a place Iraq is. They have, in effect, sold out, and for what reasons I honestly don't know. Maybe they believe that the Republicans are digging their own grave in Iraq, and that as a result of this war they will not be allowed to hold high office again for generations. Would that it were true! But people's memories are astoundingly short about things like this.

In a nutshell, our defeat in Vietnam was based on demoralization on the home front, aided and abetted by the media with the draft as their primary theme, which in turn led to half-hearted and insufficiently-resourced military actions, which in turn led to us simply being booted out of the country. The end of the draft did not come soon enough to enable a regouping -- and as I said, the volunteer army was a different customer than an army made up of conscripted cannon fodder. Plus, the casualty toll was much higher; if we had casualties on that order in Iraq there might be a revolution going on right now. People have simply lost patience with going overseas and grinding people to fine power just because we can. And they have grown at least somewhat more skeptical of our politicians' rationales -- but not enough to cause a sea change; at least not yet. So we are going to have to be taught a damn good lesson, once again, and with every bit as much pain as the last time. But this time the lesson may be permanent -- in which case, it's really not a lesson at all, but a termination. The question that will remain, for scholars and historians to grapple with for generations, is -- is this war the reductio ad absurdum of what has always been a hidden flaw -- a ticking time bomb -- in the American system? In other words, will we suffer defeat because the war is _too_ American, or too un-American? And, if it hadn't been Iraq, would it have been some other place?

And what if it's not the end after all? What if Iraq really _is_ another Vietnam, i.e. traumatic, disastrous, life-changing, but not fatal? Then we'll have to look around for another Iraq.