I need to address, head on, one kind of criticism that has been percolating through this blog’s comments and that I’ve noticed in various forms on other sites.
The criticism embraces a number of related arguments, but the overall package goes like this: Why are you posting so much discouraging information about the war? You sound glad that things aren’t going as well as planned for the American forces. Why are you hurting morale? Aren’t you just playing into Saddam’s hands?
Before the war started, if one suggested that the US might be underestimating the problems of an invasion of Iraq, it was considered “helping Saddam”; now that the war is on, discussing those problems as they unfold is considered “helping Saddam.” Apparently there is no appropriate time to challenge what may well prove a misguided policy. We should all just shut up and let Rumsfeld do the talking. Gee, how convenient!
Anyone who has been reading my comments from before the start of this war to the present knows that I felt all along that the Bush/Rumsfeld war plan showed scary signs of overconfidence. This has been a consistent theme. On this blog, I’m not attempting to provide a comprehensive overview of war news (some others are doing a great job of that), but I have been interested in watching to see whether my perspective is being borne out by events or not.
As things have unfolded, a whole range of people who share that perspective have now stepped forward in the media. They’re not all journalists or antiwar protesters vulnerable to the charge, however baseless, of cheering American setbacks; many are retired military people, who worry that the U.S. plan was based on faulty intelligence or selective reading of intelligence (the Iraqis won’t fight back) and overconfident assumptions about force requirements (superior U.S. technology means we don’t need to outnumber the enemy in order to win).
So, for the record, and I hope for the last time, I’ll say: I hope this war ends as soon as possible. Anyone who basically thinks the war was a mistake, as I do, must feel that way. I hope it ends with as little bloodshed as possible. Since President Bush has now declared that the war will last “as long as it will take” to remove Saddam Hussein from power — Rumsfeld says “weeks, not months,” but he’s lost a lot of credibility over the past few days — I hope, for the sake of the American and British soldiers fighting against him and the Iraqi soldiers fighting for him and the Iraqi civilians caught cruelly in the middle, that a stray bullet or missile takes the dictator out.
But, as we have heard the military saying goes, “Hope is not a plan.” The plan was Bush’s and Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s, and as a result of it, hundreds of thousands of American and British soldiers are now stuck in what could prove to be a much more harrowing situation than those planners promised. It is these men and women — not Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld — who will pay the price, either on the battlefield itself or, for the rest of their lives, in their hearts and memories of war’s nightmares.
So, personally, I’m not happy at all when I read about the trouble U.S. forces are having right now: I’m angry. Because the problems weren’t unexpected, they were out there for everyone to see — though maybe they weren’t circulated or discussed as widely, because dissenters within government and critics outside it were worried about being accused of “helping Saddam.” And in the end the problems were ignored by policymakers who had every opportunity to gather the most reliable information, but whose egotism and hubris set them up for a possible fall.
And that’s why I will continue to post here and not be too worried about presenting discouraging news and commentary that will rouse complaints I’m “hurting morale” or “helping Saddam.” Maybe we needed more of that kind of discussion before this war began.
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