What If the Iraq War Really is the Fight for Civilization Itself?
Given the intense unpopularity of President Bush, it is easy to hear everything he says through a lens of cynicism. Given the tendency of his party to exploit the anniversary of 9/11, it is easy to write off his words as campaign propaganda that he trots out every two years before an election. But when I heard President Bush say that the War in Iraq is not only the defining war of our generation, but a struggle for civilization itself, a terrifying thought occurred to me.
What if he is right?
The What Ifs
What if by either withdrawing or decimating our armed forces through slow and bloody attrition over the next few years, we can be said to have “lost” the Iraq War? And what if, through either of these possibilities, a regime like the Taliban is able to seize power? (Set aside, for the moment, the possibility that even under the best circumstances, such a regime might be voted into power anyway.)
What if, because we “lost” the War in Iraq, Baghdad becomes a refuge for terrorists? What if, because we were unable to deliver actual freedom to the Iraqis, the Middle East becomes even more infested with religious fanatics who want to kill us? And what if, because of our failure to kill enough of these fanatics in Iraq – we are killing them there, so we don’t have to kill them over here, or so I’m told – terrorists are somehow enabled to obtain weapons of mass destruction?
What if, without eyes and ears on the ground in Iraq, we become even less capable of predicting and pre-empting attacks against our nation? What if, because of our failure in Iraq, a nuclear bomb is detonated in an America?
These questions petrify me, but they should shame George Bush.
Because, if the President means what he says, he should resign immediately. He should not wait to be impeached or replaced or deposed, but resign now. And if the President is right, citizens should go to the polls and refuse to vote for any Republican who supports George Bush’s leadership.
Why?
Because the only thing that we know for sure about George Bush is that he cannot win this war.
He Cannot Win
George Bush cannot win the War in Iraq, because he no longer has public support-not for himself or for the war. He is a deeply unpopular President. About sixty percent of Americans think that he’s doing a bad job. Even more of them strongly disapprove of the way he’s handling the Iraq War.
Indisputably, his leadership has failed. And if we’re in a war for civilization itself in Iraq, then we need a President we don’t fundamentally dislike. Mothers and fathers don’t give up their sons and daughters to die for civilization if they think those lives will be ill spent by a leader they distrust.
Another reason George Bush cannot win this war, is that he has surrounded himself with the worst diplomats since no one living can remember. We are losing the War in Iraq on several fronts, but the Public Relations Front is where we’re getting slaughtered. And when it’s a war about civilization, that’s one place you need to hold the line.
If the Iraq War is indeed, a war in which civilization itself hangs in the balance, we should not be the only civilized people fighting it. We need more soldiers, and they shouldn’t all be American. We need more money, and it shouldn’t all come from American children. In short, to win a war for civilization itself, we need the other civilized countries in the world to step up. And it’s clear that this administration is incapable of marshaling international cooperation to any degree whatsoever.
In fact, this administration goes out of its way to dismantle the very apparatus of international cooperation; such as appointing a UN Ambassador who proclaimed he wanted to destroy the UN.
Now, George Bush and his administration and his party cannot be blamed for the fecklessness of other nations. We live in a new global economy where every nation is out for itself. Including the communists.
And even the considerable charm of Bill Clinton was unable to work its magic on all the world’s powers; he was only able to amass NATO to help us in Kosovo. But NATO is still more than we have now. If we could muster up NATO to help us fight against genocide, surely we can muster at least that to help us fight for civilization itself.
Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, and Bolton have not only miserably failed to produce the international cooperation we need to win the Iraq War, but they have created considerable bad blood that now renders them incapable of changing course and achieving victory.
Which leads to the third reason George Bush cannot win this war: he has become the emblem of everything that motivates our enemies. Whether it’s glibly denying torture he knows has happened, blithely ignoring international law, or hypocritically droning on about freedoms while asking Americans to live with fewer, he has become a lightning rod to justify the evils that our enemies in Iraq (and elsewhere) wish to perpetrate against us.
Make no mistake, we will be hated by fanatics who want to kill us even when George Bush is no longer President; but we will not necessarily be hated by moderates. It is the hearts and minds of those moderates who will help us win this war, because it is those moderates who will provide us information, who will alert us to danger, and who will make a hostile environment for terrorists.
Right now, our own government admits that those moderates are being radicalized against us. That’s not good. We need to acknowledge that there are more Muslims in the world than Americans; we need to start making some friends. We can’t do that with the symbol of George Bush and all the hypocrisy his administration has come to represent at home and abroad.
We must take the face they hate off the project.
Conclusion
In summation, if George Bush is telling the truth, then he needs to resign today. Yesterday, in fact. If he is to be believed, then he has made the best argument yet for a new administration, or at least new leadership in Washington this mid-term election.
If civilization hangs in the balance, we don’t have time to wait for Rumsfeld and the Gang That Couldn’t Even Deal With A Hurricane to screw up again. Nor can we afford the Rubber Stamp Congress that lets them screw up any way they want without oversight.
If civilization itself is hanging in the balance this election, then there’s no choice but to vote drastic change. Because if we’re in a war for civilization, the status quo is losing. And if the President is right, the price of trusting him or his party is just too high.
