I was struck by an interesting paraphrase of statements made today by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services committee, during today's hearings (emphasis mine):
Levin said there was "no military settlement without a political settlement."
He said the Bush administration should tell the Iraqis that if they do not meet their deadline for drafting a constitution -- August 15, with a possible six-month extension -- the United States will consider setting a timetable for troop withdrawals.
That "not" in "do not" is what I hope the typo is....but unfortunately, it seems to be reinforced as not being such by the following statement:
"We must demonstrate to the Iraqis that our willingness to bear the burden ... has limits," Levin said.
Apparently what Levin thinks is that the Iraqis are malingerers -- they're not writing a constitution because that means they're forming a real government, and if they form a real government, they'll have to start weaning themselves off the military equivalent of welfare and start fighting themselves.
This to me is an excellent example of the veiled and vaguely-racist contempt that the Democrats hold for the Iraqis, as exemplified by the commonly-heard argument that if the Iraqis didn't want Saddam as their ruler, they should have rebelled and kicked him out. As the immense number of mass graves and people in them in Iraq shows, the will to rebel wasn't the problem -- the ability to fight against someone who had no compunction about gassing, bombing, using tanks, and unleashing an army over a half-million-strong (counting the Fedayeen, etc.) on his people was.
The example of the Marsh Arabs is perhaps one of the best ways of showing how Saddam Hussein crushed rebellion. Not only did he kill thousands outright, he systematically destroyed an entire ecosystem to deprive them of their livelihood, their culture, and their group cohesion, and virtually ensure that they could not resist him. This was, for lack of a better comparison, the Kristallnacht for half a million people, an effect which is only now starting to be undone. For us to put that into perspective as Americans, the rough equivalent would be for our government, in order to suppress a rebellion, to level everything in the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut, kill nearly a million people, and leave the remaining population cut off from their jobs and food supply, forced to leave their homes and families just for survival.
Of course, what Levin seems to be forgetting is this:
Iraqis are to vote on the proposed constitution in a referendum by October 15. It must be ratified by a two-thirds majority of voters. If approved, elections for a permanent government would be held by December 15.
Of course, Levin wants the United States to say, in essence, "If you don't elect a government, we're leaving." Brilliant strategic move on his part; since virtually every Iraqi wants the Americans to ultimately leave, they are now rewarded whether they form a government or not. The question then becomes who would benefit the most from a government NOT being formed and a state of anarchy without any stable central force whatsoever to rein in excess; that's not too difficult to ascertain, because it's very similar to Taliban Afghanistan. I think we can safely say that it won't be the bulk of the Iraqi people who are beneficiaries.
The Iraqis should of course be encouraged to form a stable, final government as swiftly as possible, and it was indeed a gross and terrible mistake on the Bush administration's part to be as naively optimistic as they were that the Iraqis would do so in a hurry and without substantial armed opposition. However, neither allowing the Saddam regime with its brutality, international defiance, and threatening behavior to persist, nor a selfish withdrawal that would allow Iraq to collapse into Talibanesque anarchy, was or is in the best interests of the United States, the Middle East, and ultimately the world.
The simple fact is that the Gulf War was the time for Saddam's reign to end. The United States and the world chose otherwise, and the bill for that decision is now being collected. We cannot escape that fact or its responsibility, either by arguing that we should have asked for a few more years' extension, or that the vapid "inspection process" be continued, or that the war was "sold" based on assumptions that ultimately turned out to be incorrect, or that we could not possibly have estimated how long it would take.
Ultimately, history will judge that we did the right thing; however, it will also record that we did it at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons.
UPDATE (7:30 PM CDT): Things get stranger and stranger. This is what the latest update is saying:
Sen. Carl Levin, the panel's ranking member, agreed that setting a timetable would be counterproductive and would "give an incentive to insurgents and jihadists to simply outlast us and would also increase the chances of civil war on our departure."
But the Michigan Democrat said that Iraqi leaders must be encouraged to meet deadlines for creating a new constitution. The Iraqis face an August 15 deadline to draft a constitution to be put before voters in October.
So Levin thinks that setting a timetable would be counterproductive, give incentive to the wrong people, and increase the chances of civil war -- but he wants to threaten the Iraqis with setting one as an "encouragement" for Iraqi leaders.
Does that make ANY sense?
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