Tom Sgouros: Never Forget What Iraq Cost Us

Monday, December 12, 2011

Tom Sgouros, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

 

As the end of the year approaches, we get closer to another step in extricating ourselves from Iraq, something I'll be celebrating along with the advent of 2012. There are two points worth remembering here.

First: the deal to leave this December was a deal crafted by George W. Bush during 2008. I am dismayed that President Obama chose not to try and accelerate the process, but the agreement to leave at the end of 2011 was not his doing and my dismay is ameliorated by relief he has not chosen to extend the deadline. The fact that the imperative to craft the agreement was probably motivated by a desire to help John McCain's campaign for President that fall is irrelevant. Bush agreed to it, and all carping about Obama leaving Iraq should take that into account.

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In a big way, blaming Obama for leaving Iraq is akin to blaming him for the bank bailout. So often we seem to forget that TARP was a $700 billion bailout of the banks orchestrated by Hank Paulson and other Bush administration officials -- as was the beginning of the $7.7 trillion back-door method of recapitalizing the banks whose dimensions came out in a Bloomberg report a couple of weeks ago. Obama acceded to far too much of this status quo for my taste, but blaming him for the agreement is the worst kind of amnesia.

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Second: On the eve of extracting ourselves from this awful chapter in our history, when the wreckage of this war lies all about us in military hospitals and in budgets bloated by our absurd military spending, it is something more than just bad taste for people to be warming us up for another war.

The ghost of Neville Chamberlain

I don't know about you, but I am sick to death of people forever invoking the ghost of Neville Chamberlain. "Appeasement," you hear, most recently from Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum speaking about Iran to the Republican Jewish Coalition last week. In November, Rep. Allan West (R-FL), a member of the Tea Party caucus, said of Iran, "This is a Chamberlain-Churchill moment for the United States of America." Googling "Chamberlain" on anchorrising.com gets 80 hits, only one of which appears to be about basketball.

This kind of speech is a disgrace. Yes, Neville Chamberlain seemed naive about the aims of Germany, but naivete about one's opponents' intent is seldom the only issue on the table, about Iran or our relationship with any other nation. As strong as our nation is, we are not omnipotent, and it is hardly treasonous to point it out. One could as well accuse warmongers about being naive about the true costs of war.

Since Chamberlain came back to Britain proclaiming he had achieved "peace in our time," we've had lots of opportunities to look at the relative success of appeasement. Since WWII, we've gone into Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, the Balkans, Somalia, and Afghanistan, not to mention Grenada and Panama, and doubtless some I'm forgetting. Our not-very-well-disguised proxies spent quality time in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and plenty of others. On the other hand, we didn't go into China, and our intervention in the Soviet Union was limited to helping a few hundred saboteurs sneak in to the country over 30 years, most of whom were efficiently captured upon arrival. (See Tim Weiner's excellent history of the CIA, "Legacy of Ashes" for more on them.) We also didn't do anything obvious in South Africa, we stayed remarkably neutral in the Falklands War, and have been restrained in western Africa.

In other words, we have a long record of our own to look to. How's it look to you? Was staying out of China misguided appeasement? Was it a mistake to avoid direct confrontation with the Soviets? Was it a good idea to go into Vietnam? How about Korea or the Balkans? You don't need to think the answers to these are obvious in order to think the lessons of those episodes are more relevant to us than the Munich conference. What's more relevant to a decision to invade Iran? Britain's experience with Germany 70 years ago or our own experience in two of its immediate neighbors over the last decade?

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Song of glory

A few weeks ago, I found myself listening once again to my favorite paean to war and its glory. This comes in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance," and Mabel, making it clear she is staying put, is encouraging the somewhat reluctant policemen to go round up those terrible pirates:

Go, ye heroes, go to glory,
Though you die in combat gory,
Ye shall live in song and story.
Go to immortality!
Go to death, and go to slaughter;
Die, and every Cornish daughter
With her tears your grave shall water.
Go, ye heroes, go and die!

It is undeniable that some problems require forceful solutions. I lost friends in the World Trade Center and don't really mind that Osama Bin Laden is no longer on this earth. But what our nation absolutely does not need is more Mabels of mayhem, pushing us into violent confrontation to solve every problem. You don't have to discount threats from our enemies to understand that the threat of military action acts on us as well as our enemies.

Why not spend a little time this holiday season browsing costsofwar.org, a wonderfully informative web site put together by Catherine Lutz of Brown University and Neda Crawford of Boston University. And, since arguing over holiday salutations seems all the rage, let me put in my vote for, "Peace on earth and goodwill to all."

Tom Sgouros is the editor of the Rhode Island Policy Reporter, at whatcheer.net and the author of "Ten Things You Don't Know About Rhode Island." Contact him at [email protected].

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