The Ebb and Flow of War and Opinion

[monk222]

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How the ebb and flow of war and the tides of opinion do change! One remembers back in the early spring when even the French began to consider that President Bush may have been right in his more aggressive Middle East policy and bid to democratize and liberalize the Middle East. People spoke of an Arab spring and the flowering of democracy. They spoke of tipping points and how matters could still go either way.

That was then and this is now. Progress seems stalled, and the insurgency continues to pound relentlessly, raising to vertiginous heights the toll on lives and treasure. Any promise of a near and soft landing of our conflicts and wars with the Middle East seems at an end, so that we are back to the old and tiring reality of ceaseless war, albeit one played out more quietly in the shadows - a kind of Cold War. The tipping points seem to have fallen the wrong way.

Richard Cohen's "The Other Guy's Sacrifice" is a good indication of this change of philosophical climate, focusing more on the mortal costs of the Iraq War rather than on the promise of a new world order of true peace and progress for both East and West - a peace for the long term, in which we see happily co-existing Westerner and Muslim, Christianity and Islam, and Arab and Jew.

On a related if somewhat tangental note, Craig Whitlock has an interesting article, "Italians Detail Lavish CIA Operations," giving us some idea of the more shadowy side of the war, as our agents double-oh-seven it in Italy, living the high life undercover to capture suspected terrorists - a little high farce and drama. And on and on we go. But hasn't it always been so?

Comments

[antilapsarian.livejournal.com]

Of course, it is hard for the anti-war crowd to not say "I told you so" after all this. No WMDs, no new world order of peace and progress, no democratic/free/peaceful Iraq. I think people largely labored under the hope that something could be done...something good might come from military intervention. But for awhile now public sentiment has gone away from thinking the war was a good idea. It's brought killing, debt, instability at home and in Iraq.

I think the main problem now is how to gracefully back out. Rumsfeld said today that it may be years before the insurgency is stopped. Whether or not the American public wants to deal with it--jingoism is still very high--I think the difficulty is going to be that we seem to have leadership who wants to hammer away at thin air. To the rest of the world, we just look silly and not recognizing that we fucked up is further destroying any respect we may have left. Damage control is hard when nobody admits there is any damage. But we need to get back on track by first apologizing to the Iraqi people and then beginning the pullout process. Keep helping them rebuild and form a new nation...but one of the problems all along is that this reform didn't come from within. Iraqis themselves didn't rise up and want to topple Saddam. Hence, we're bogged down because we can't just leave and feel confident that Iraqis will settle their own issues.

[queensugar.livejournal.com]

I'm still going to thrum into your brain the importance of Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom, Monk.

I think if you take Fareed's theories about Middle East and put them into full effect, it becomes obvious why the aggressive approach failed.

No more time to talk about that, though: I've got a hot date.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Hmm, but Fareed did support the Iraq War, as I recall. Though, I appreciate that's not inconsistent with disagreeing with the way it has been carried out.

Glad to see you back in the saddle, hon! :)

[queensugar.livejournal.com]

He supported the war under conditions, and those conditions were not met.

But I'm referring to the post-war process, which has been even more disastrous than the pre-war process.