Blog Purpose and Why the Left is Wrong on the Iraq War

Hello World!

Or more accurately, the part of the world that is reading this . . . which is likely to be something close to zero . . . for now.

But hopefully, this blog will eventually find its desired audience: well-meaning American progressives and liberals who are open to new ideas about what the "left" side of the political spectrum should be doing right now.

If you are satisfied with the progressive and liberal agenda as well as the strategies and tactics being used to carry it out, then, by all means, click on . . .

. . . but the rest of us, this blog will hopefully contribute to a new discussion and, ultimately, new directions in thought and action.

This blog reflects a belief that if we need new thinking on the left in order to more effectively bring about the social, economic and political changes that we are seeking.

I think most of us would agree on much of what those changes would look like: ending poverty and building a prosperous middle class; maintaining a healthy and vibrant natural environment; achieving true racial and ethnic justice and equality; making sure that all Americans are able to access high-quality health care, education and housing without being driven into bankruptcy; an American foreign policy that supports peace, human rights and sustainable development. I could go on for pages, but I really think that there’s more consensus here than most of us realize.

We also know that there are very powerful forces within our political/economic system who oppose that agenda. The middle class has been shrinking, while the rich get richer and the poor get more numerous. Multinational corporations rape our national environment at an exponentially increasing rate. Health care, education and housing are being priced out of the budgets of more and more Americans every year. America’s foreign policy has by and large been an agent of war, injustice and poverty more often than not.

But most importantly, however, for purposes of this blog, is that I believe that any objective observer would have to conclude that the progressive and liberal agenda described above has been, for the most part, losing out to the agenda of the rich and the powerful since the ascendancy of the conservative movement to national power with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

And, I would argue, this trend of the last three decades stands in sharp contrast to the trend of most of the decades before it starting with the Progressive Movement and then the New Deal incredible positive changes were being fought for and won in American society. The incredible expansion of the middle class and reduction in poverty, the establishment of great national parks and innumerable local ones, racial integration of schools and public accommodation, quality health care, education and housing becoming affordable to more people than ever before and America leading the world in gigantic wars against the tyranny and oppression of Nazism and Authoritarian Communism.

So the fundamental questions, for me at least, are: Where did we go wrong and what can we do to get back on track?

I don’t pretend to have all of the answers. That’s the beautiful thing about a blog – it can be used to stimulate a discussion so that answers can come from a variety of sources. But I have given this topic a lot of thought and study and I think that I have some valuable points to add to the discussion. But the point that I feel most sure about is that we aren’t having enough of these kinds of discussions. We keep beating out heads against brick walls trying to move them.

I’m hoping that this blog will convince enough of us to step back for a moment, look at the brick wall, realize that beating our heads against it will not cause it to crumble down before us, and begin to map out a strategy for going around or over the wall without losing our way.

At one level, this is a very theoretical discussion about ideology and pragmatism, democracy, etc., but I will try to embed that discussion within discussions of immediately relevant topics, i.e. topics that can be impacted upon right now. This is not an academic exercise. Wars are being prosecuted in our names, important elections are impending. We need to stay current and we need to put our beliefs into action whenever possible.

In that vein, I will start with what I would consider to be the two biggest political issues currently facing the left in American: the Iraq War and the fight for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Why the Left is Wrong on the Iraq War

The left correctly opposed the Iraq War from its inception. President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq is the worst foreign policy decision made by a President in U.S. history, one for which we will be paying a heavy price for decades to come. It was a completely immoral and illegal action for which President Bush and other members of his inner circle should be prosecuted as war criminals.

But . . . for us to now be pushing for a withdrawal from Iraq in the face of that country’s mounting humanitarian crisis might just be even more immoral. I think this position is a huge error in judgment that the left will regret within two or three years.

Wait! Before you click away and swear me off as just another Bush apologist, just let me lay out a couple of simple arguments that I believe are really pretty reasonable.

First, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to believe that the level of sectarian violence in Iraq is inversely proportional to our troop presence there. That is to say, the more troops we have on the ground over there, the fewer dead bodies.

Although the numbers presented by General Petraeus to the U.S. Congress, if they are to be trusted, would tend to bear this out, you don’t have to believe him on this. Every knowledgeable person, both within the military and outside of it, told us that for us to properly secure Iraq after an invasion would require 500,000 to 600,000 troops.

That number isn’t a wild guess. It’s a direct extrapolation of the number of troops sent by President Clinton to secure the peace amidst another ethno-religious sectarian civil war: Bosnia. Almost a decade after then of that war, there are still 20,000 multinational troops policing a smaller population than the city of Los Angeles.

If that basic, quite reasonable assumption turns out to be true, it would follow that as we begin to pull out our troops, the dead bodies of the innocent will begin to pile up in the streets of Baghdad at an increasing rate. What will we do then? Would we just turn a blind eye and tell the Iraqi people not to blame us because we never voted for Bush?

And keep in mind, many of the most visible advocates for a troop withdrawal, including Senator Hillary Clinton the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination (more on that later) voted to authorize this war. Colin Powell’s warning to President Bush before the war (“If you break it, you own it”) applies with equal force to a Senator who made it possible by voting for it. But even for those of us who opposed it from the start and never did anything to help it, as Americans we’re still responsible for it.

Yes, there are those who say nobody knows what will happen if we leave and in any case, it is our troops themselves who are the instigators of much of the violence over there and as we leave, the violence will subside. I think that’s plausible, but my point is, I wouldn’t bet on it. It’s far more likely that the violence will rise as we try to pull out and we’ll be faced with exactly the choice I’ve described above: continue the pullout amidst a mounting humanitarian crisis and possible genocide or go back in try to keep the peace.

While I would agree of course that none of this would be occurring had we never invaded, I think it’s folly to bet that now that we’ve totally ruined their country, that we can now leave and everything will just go back to the way it once was. The plain fact is that the Iraqi government does not have the ability to secure the safety of the Iraqi people. I don’t know that there is anybody who doubts that.

Letting the nation partition itself into autonomous tribally-policed ethnic enclaves is no solution either. There are mixed marriages in Iraq. There are Shiite families who lived for generations in Sunni areas, and vice-versa. In any case, who on the left would accept a totally segregated Iraqi society as our only lasting legacy on that nation?

Come on people! We may not like President Bush and everything that he stands for. We can even say that he wasn’t even rightfully elected. We can say that he acted illegally, without proper authorization, outside of the Constitution, but the fact remains that what he did was done in our name and we are now responsible for it. We owe the Iraqi people whatever we can give them in the way of safety, security and the reconstruction of their society along lines not dominated by tribal and ethnic division.

The thing is, I’m pretty sure that ultimately, the left is going to realize this and we could very easily see, soon after a Democrat takes office in the White House in 2009, a total switcheroo of sides on Iraq, with the Democrats wanting to stay in order to avoid a humanitarian crisis and the Republicans urging a pull-out. It’s not so crazy . . . that was exactly the posture of the two parties with respect to Bosnia and Somalia.

Unfortunately, however, that reversal may cause so much chaos and confusion on the left that it might set our cause back for decades. It would be the ultimate “flip-flop,” an even worse reneging on a campaign promise than the first Bush’s “read my lips” fiasco.

I think the only principled position that we can take right now is that we are committed to doing whatever it takes to bring about an end to the chaos and violence afflicting Iraqi society and deliver a program of reconstruction that at least returns them to where they were before we invaded. If that can be done effectively by reducing our troop presence and pulling out completely, great! But if it proves to be the case that we cannot do so without keeping our troops there and/or sending even more troops, then unfortunately that is our moral responsibility.

OK, that’s it for now. If anyone somehow finds this, I’d love to har your comments. The next entry will be my endorsement of Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. And no, I’m not a paid staff member of any political candidate or party. It’s just one person’s opinion that Barack Obama could be our generation’s FDR.