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No End in Sight

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

There is an old story that comes out of China from the Jin Dynasty when Emperor Jun Cheng ruled the land. A general named Sun Jun rebelled and seized the capital city of Jian Kang (Nanjing). Many of the area's war lords banded together to fight Sun Jun, but one of the most powerful Generals, Tao Kan, hesitated to join in the alliance, fearing that it would fall apart at any moment and there was certain to be heavy loses on the battlefield by facing such a strong rebel army. One of the commanders, Wen Jiao, was dispatched to Tao Kan headquarters to convince him to join in the cause, knowing that there was no way victory was possible without him. Wen Jiao convinced Tao Kan to join the war by telling him, "In light of the current situation, there is no other way out. It is like riding on the back of a tiger and finding it hard to get off. The only way out is to kill it." "Riding on the back of a tiger and finding it hard to get off" has come to be a euphemism for being stuck in a difficult position and having no way out. As much as right-wingers like Bill O'Reilly believe that total victory is possible in Iraq. It has become a tiger and there is no graceful way of getting off its back. There are only bad and worse solutions to how to end this ride.

We have not even pushed the helicopters into the water yet, and it is pretty obvious we are going to spend the next 20 years Monday morning quarterbacking. Historians and commentators will bat around whether faulty intelligence drove our invasion plans or did plans for an invasion drive faulty intelligence. Why was none of the State Department planning for a post-war Iraq listened to? Was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld notions of a lighter privatized army a boondoggle? Was taking these forces into action on two different fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan, a huge mistake? Was our high-handed foreign policy responsible for the lack of success of building a coalition or was it never possible for such a force to be built? Should we have had better relations with Muslim countries that surrounded it? Why didn't we have better intelligence on the ground? Was the pre-invasion Shock and Awe bombing that knocked out the nation's infrastructure incredibly stupid? Similarly, was disbanding the army a major mistake or was there even a force to keep together? What role did corruption play in the failure to rebuild the nation? Should we have gone in with a much larger force, which might have meant a draft, or was the force we had good enough? Once in place, did we back the wrong ponies, choose the wrong leaders? Was there better ways of reaching out to the various leaders throughout the country? Even if we did everything perfect, was it even possible for the three distinct groups to play nice with each other after centuries of hatred? What role did Iran really play in the conflict? Was the political system that we set up the best or was a three state confederate set up better? Should Saddam Hussein been tried at the World Court or was the show trial in Iraq with a certain death sentence the way to go? Does it make a difference? What role did our torture and mistreatment of prisoners at places like Abu Ghraib play in losing the hearts and minds of the people? Was winning the hearts and minds even possible? What mistakes did we make in training Iraqi soldiers and police? What message did we send to the people when we started constructing huge permanent bases? At what points should we have changed course? The questions could go on for pages and that is what makes everything so sad.

The documentary No End in Sight gives a nice overview of  our conduct of the Iraq War and our subsequent occupation. It focuses on the key decisions that have made Iraq a tiger whose back we cannot dismount from. Eventually, we will have to jump off and then wait to see who gets eaten. Hopefully, it will not be us. My only problem with the documentary is that it needed to take another step backward and look at the attitudes and policies that lead into the conflict. 

I want to introduce you to a wondering thing called family systems theory. (Stay with me this will all make sense.) I have a very simple rule when it comes to marriage.  I call it my three strike rule when it comes to divorce. First divorce, you can blame the other person. Second divorce, do you notice a pattern. Third divorce, you're the problem. What I mean by this is, the person in the tux or bride's dress' name might change but you are basically marrying the same personality or attitudes over and over again. It is not until you examine the underlying feelings and attitudes of why you are attracted to a particular type of person, i.e. deal with your crap, that you can break the pattern. They other person might have a dozen names but she or he is always the same person at their core Names might change but the system keeps lurching forward with the same disastrous results.

Almost 40 years ago, we were introduced to our first Imperial wife.  Her name, the Vietnam War.  She promised to love us long time. Things didn't go as planned. There were problems. It was unwinnable. There was a divorce that cost us a lot. We went through a depression and promised never again. We watch the wedding video over and over again and played out every moment of the marriage in our minds. Never again. We got our confidence back and along comes another filly who batted her eyes at us. Her name, the Iraq War.  Things are not going as planned. We know there is a divorce will happen. We will have to symbolically push the helicopters in the water. We will swear never again and 2 or 3 decades from now we will meet a new lass that will make our lives hell. In the end, I don't blame George W. Bush for the Iraq War. He is just a poor man's stand-in for Lyndon Johnson. The next Iraq or Vietnam might be in South America or in Africa, but it will be somewhere. If we really want to be a military empire, Vietnams and Iraqs are the price we pay.  Until we kill the tiger that got us into these wars, we will repeat these fruitless military adventures, repeat our failures, and repeatedly send home flag draped caskets. We have got to kill that tiger because one of these times that we jump off its back, we are going to get eaten like all empires eventually do. Let’s kill the tiger.

Verdict: A good overview