Screwed
After quoting several comments on how Bush has screwed things up in Iraq, Jacob Levey concludes:
Ugh. I still believe things to be not-irreparable in Iraq. The stakes are very high, and the U.S. has got to get this right. But I didn't think they would ever go so far wrong.I now suspect that at the end of the day Iraqis will be much better off but the U.S. will be noticeably worse off than if the war had not taken place. Iraq will end up as a more federal, more constitutional, more democratic state than exists in the Arab world so far. But, after the eventual Iraqi state has rearmed sufficiently to put down all the internal threats, it will also be more authoritarian, more militaristic, more theocratic, and more anti-American than it might have been. The U.S., however, will have sacrificed a great deal of its moral capital and credibility in the process-- moral capital and credibility that it needs in order to fight both the military and the social-transformation fronts of the war on terror.
I'm not as pessimistic as Levy, and one of the links he cites, to an MSNBC piece by Fareed Zakaria, it seems to me is coming from someone who was against the war from the start. But he's got Andrew Sullivan, and Kagan and Kristol linked to as well and they aren't of the MoveOn.org variety.
More than one of the links says Bush has mishandled relations with Ayatollah Sistani, the leader of the Shi'ites. I don't know what's being referred to there. It seems to me Sistani has been cooperative in our attempts to rein in Ayatollah Sadr. What else is there to that?
One of the criticisms found in a variety of places is that it was a mistake to disarm the military and kick out the Baathists. Maybe so. But the only criticism that sticks for me to any degree at the moment is that we may have used too few forces, if not during the invasion than at least for the occupation. I haven't seen any analysis that explains to me why the folks who made those decisions were wrong when they were made.
But that's ok. Success breeds success and failure breeds failure, even if the formulas for both were "right" at the outset. Still, by no means do I think all is lost, and the worst effect of the prisoner treatment debacle will be if it distracts us from where we're going and where we need to be. And the worst outcome of the investigations and court martials to come (aside from the growing sense, to me unbelievable, that we can't win) will be throwing the book at the army enlisted personnel on the scene if those directly responsible for their conduct aren't included.
The problem for me as November slowly approaches is that I think the idea of the War was correct and I don't think all is lost by any means. I think it is only lost when we think it is lost. Things could have gone better than they have, and a large lot of the criticism aimed at Bush is political -- but not all of it. Still, John Kerry can't possibly convince me he's the guy to make it work without utterly reversing everything he's said thus far in his campaign. Hold it -- that may still happen. After all, he just backed off his Benedict Arnold CEO bit.
Are we screwed? Or are we screwed?