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Iraq and the problem of not watching

Each day the local newspaper headlines more carnage in Iraq at the same time Administration spokespeople argue that if we stay the course we will ultimately succeed — whatever the definition of success may now be — in Iraq. And I turn the page, hopeless, unwilling and unable to read past the headlines. In part because there is so much spin going on that it's impossible to penetrate the fog of this particular war. Mostly because the daily headlines inure one to the hopelessness of the thing.

Meanwhile the Democrats in Congress play their new game, this public relations stunt of tying funding to continue military operations to a pull-out date. It's a stunt, nothing more than a late pretense of doing their job, because they can't override a Bush veto, and because it's not clear (at least not to me) that Congress has the Constitutional authority to do much of anything at this juncture, short of repealing the President's authorization to go to war, which, I believe, is without precedent. So maybe a stunt is all they can manage, but it's far too little too late.

The problem is, the Democrats don't have the moral authority to do much of anything, either. We elect leaders to lead, even when they're not in power. And the Democrats, as the loyal opposition, have done little or no leading throughout this debacle. So now, as the toll rises and public opinion shifts, their sudden resolute stand plays like politics, and nothing more.

We now know, to a fair certainty, that the Bush Administration sexed-up the intelligence (in the splendid British phrase, though there hardly seems any sex in this Administration) which was used to justify our invasion of Iraq. The Bush cadre now act as if those falsehoods are irrelevant, and accidental, when they are neither. When we now know that, rather than contest the merits of Ambassador Wilson's opinion piece that aspects of the intelligence were flawed, elements of the Administration chose to out his wife as a CIA operative.

We continue to operate in Iraq as if those blithe and demonstrably flawed assumptions were valid, and we continue to fail, just as logic argues is inevitable. More to the point, our Congressional leaders knew bloody well that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. They should have stood and made that point forcefully and repeatedly, rather than allowing the Administration to count on the inability of Americans (as Alan Jackson so poignantly noted) to distinguish between Iran and Iraq.

Obviously I have no experience of the Congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence operations, so it's hard to know whether Congress were willing or unwilling dupes in this process. But it seems to me that as soon as it was clear that our pretext for invasion was invalid -- and this was pretty clear pretty early on -- there should have been hearings, investigations, or at least a storm of loud and public opposition.

It is our tradition not to argue while our troops are in harm's way. I think that's a dangerous tradition, particularly when we are conducting combat operations built on sets of false projections and expectations.

But where was our Democratic Congressional leadership? Why did they lack the spine to stand up and call the White House to account, even if they lacked the votes to make it stick? Because they feared for their re-election prospects? Because public opinion tilted then to the war effort?

Fine. But that general (if not specific) unwillingness to stand and be counted in the beginning guts the moral imperative of their drive now to force withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody thinks they're taking the high road, nobody thinks they're making this public display of affection because it's the right thing to do. They're doing it because it's politically expedient. And that's a lousy reason.

They may be right. Reasonable people have argued that we would at least reduce tensions if we made clear a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq; that the ethnic partitioning is largely done. Of course then the Kurds have a de facto homeland, which further destabilizes Pakistan, and we know they have nukes. Not to mention the further bloodbath of unbridled ethnic cleansing. Not to mention the specter of another fundamentalist Islamic state rising from the ashes. And the Administration clearly wishes is to believe that if we don't provide Al Qaida sufficient blood in Iraq, where it's easily come by, they'll come looking for their fix on our shores once again. And not to forget the profits which accrue to all the contractors doing the work of war in Iraq.

I remember, during the Americana Music Association conference, walking past television sets broadcasting Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations outlining the case made by U.S. intelligence agencies for the invasion of Iraq. And I remember feeling helpless. Was Saddam Hussein really the only dictator in possession of weapons of mass destruction? Were these flimsy pieces of evidence -- trucks which were believed to be mobile labs, aluminum tubes which may have been used for missiles -- satellite photos being read correctly, or were they a chimera designed to suggest we had far more damning evidence that we were unable or unprepared to bring to the table. (And had anyone other than Colin Powell made the case, would we have accepted it?)

We are now all helpless. There is no way out. There is no way forward.

Next election, let's look for politicians who will, in the phrase, speak truth to power. But let's remember that we are the power. And let's remember that public officials need to know that they're being watched.

Posted by grant on April 16, 2007 9:23 AM | Permalink