The Osterley Times: Victory Is Not an Option

Lt. Gen. William Odom, the former director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan and head of Army intelligence, has written a superb op-ed for the Washington Post that destroys the arguments Bush and his followers are using to justify remaining in Iraq and reveals the insanity of any possible intervention against Iran. The article's title: "Victory is not an option" is, in itself, a welcome dose of reality against the onslaught of facile reasoning put forward by William Kristol and his ilk as to why the US should remain engaged in Iraq.

Most of us have long concluded that the US have lost in Iraq and it is something of a relief to find someone in General Odom's position who has the courage to speak so candidly at a time when Bush and his followers portray opposition to their insane plans as some sort of lack of patriotism.

Odum begins by acknowledging the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and it's conclusion that it is not possible to produce what Bush says will be required in order for the United States to declare victory in Iraq: namely, a stable liberal democracy that is pro-American.

His language is refreshingly clear:

To expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense. It took the United States more than a century to get over its hostility toward British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored supporting Germany against Britain.) Every month of the U.S. occupation, polls have recorded Iraqis' rising animosity toward the United States.

This has always been one of fatal flaws in the logic of those who argued for the Iraq war. The idea that the two nations who voted to impose punitive sanctions on Iraq for twelve long years, sanctions that were responsible for the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children; the very notion that these same two country's could hope to invade Iraq, label it "liberation" and imagine that they would be greeted as "liberators" is about as fantastical a thing as I think I have ever heard. It is no exaggeration to describe such thinking as simply delusional.

Nor has this level of delusional thinking altered after the invasion. Indeed, delusion litters every reason that the Bush camp give as to why the US must stay the course and remain in Iraq, despite the fact that every reasonable person on the planet can see very clearly that the war is lost.

The General then goes on to debunk each of these "reasons" for remaining in Iraq one by one:

1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon. Reflect on the double-think of this formulation. We are now fighting to prevent what our invasion made inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a mess -- the mess we created, which has become worse each year we have remained. Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath express fear that quitting it will leave a blood bath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a "failed state," or some other horror. But this "aftermath" is already upon us; a prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists.

2) We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq. This is another absurd notion. One of the president's initial war aims, the creation of a democracy in Iraq, ensured increased Iranian influence, both in Iraq and the region. Electoral democracy, predictably, would put Shiite groups in power -- groups supported by Iran since Saddam Hussein repressed them in 1991. Why are so many members of Congress swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now supposed to prevent precisely what starting the war inexorably and predictably caused? Fear that Congress will confront this contradiction helps explain the administration and neocon drumbeat we now hear for expanding the war to Iran.

Here we see shades of the Nixon-Kissinger strategy in Vietnam: widen the war into Cambodia and Laos. Only this time, the adverse consequences would be far greater. Iran's ability to hurt U.S. forces in Iraq are not trivial. And the anti-American backlash in the region would be larger, and have more lasting consequences.

3) We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq. But it was the U.S. invasion that opened Iraq's doors to al-Qaeda. The longer U.S. forces have remained there, the stronger al-Qaeda has become. Yet its strength within the Kurdish and Shiite areas is trivial. After a U.S. withdrawal, it will probably play a continuing role in helping the Sunni groups against the Shiites and the Kurds. Whether such foreign elements could remain or thrive in Iraq after the resolution of civil war is open to question. Meanwhile, continuing the war will not push al-Qaeda outside Iraq. On the contrary, the American presence is the glue that holds al-Qaeda there now.

4) We must continue to fight in order to "support the troops." This argument effectively paralyzes almost all members of Congress. Lawmakers proclaim in grave tones a litany of problems in Iraq sufficient to justify a rapid pullout. Then they reject that logical conclusion, insisting we cannot do so because we must support the troops. Has anybody asked the troops?

During their first tours, most may well have favored "staying the course" -- whatever that meant to them -- but now in their second, third and fourth tours, many are changing their minds. We see evidence of that in the many news stories about unhappy troops being sent back to Iraq. Veterans groups are beginning to make public the case for bringing them home. Soldiers and officers in Iraq are speaking out critically to reporters on the ground.

But the strangest aspect of this rationale for continuing the war is the implication that the troops are somehow responsible for deciding to continue the president's course. That political and moral responsibility belongs to the president, not the troops. Did not President Harry S. Truman make it clear that "the buck stops" in the Oval Office? If the president keeps dodging it, where does it stop? With Congress?

Embracing the four myths gives Congress excuses not to exercise its power of the purse to end the war and open the way for a strategy that might actually bear fruit.

There is an undeniable logic to his rebuttals, a welcome honesty that has been singularly lacking from all discussion on this subject from the pro-war proponents.

He then even goes on to offer Bush a way to reverse policy with dignity, stating that his legacy would remember him as a President "capable of reversing direction by turning an imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery."

However, most of us realise that this is a president incapable of reversing direction. Indeed, the man who labelled John Kerry a "flip flopper" can hardly reverse course himself without encountering screams from Bill Kristol and the other assorted loons whose support he has fostered.

Gary Younge has an excellent article in today's Guardian Comment explaining Bush's inability to reverse course and detailing how, rather than reverse direction, Bush may actually repeat the mistakes of Iraq by compounding them with an attack on Iran:

George Bush is a man of conviction and clearly a hard man to change. When reality confronts his plans he does not alter them but instead alters his understanding of reality. He stands with a tight band of followers, both deluded and determined, understanding each setback not as a sign to change course but as further proof that they must redouble their efforts to the original goal.
And so we watch the administration's plans for a military attack against Iran unfold even as its official narrative for the run-up to the war in Iraq unravels and the wisdom of that war stands condemned by death and destruction. As though on split screens, we pass seamlessly from reports of how they lied to get us into the last war, to scenes of carnage as a result of the war, to shots of them lying us into the next one.
One moment we see the trial of Dick Cheney's former deputy, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, revealing how the administration sought to discredit critics of the plans to invade Iraq; the next we see them discrediting critics of their plans to attack Iran. On one page, newly released documents reveal how the defence department contorted evidence to justify bombing Baghdad; on the next, the administration is using suspect evidence to justify bombing Iran.
"It is absolutely parallel," Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist, told Vanity Fair magazine. "They're using the same dance steps - demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux."

So, sadly, the good sense of General Odum is likely to fall on deaf ears, as this President continues to confuse and conflate his own legacy and the national interest.

However, the power to stop him still resides in Congress. If Congress had the clarity and courage of it's convictions that Odum is displaying, then this President would be stopped in his tracks before he was capable of causing any more damage.

As Bush careers towards an invasion of Iran, an invasion that would have simply catastrophic implications for the US, the task of true patriots is to stop him.

Click title for Odum's article.