IRAQ AGONISTES

Paul Greenberg


"The greatest evil is not now done in those
sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to
paint. It is not even done in concentration
camps and labor camps. In those we see
(evil's) final result. But it is conceived and
ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and
minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-
lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars
and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks
who do not need to raise their voices."
--C.S. Lewis, "The Screwtape Letters"
Call it déjà vu, the feeling that we've been
here before, that events in the news are
happening again, only with a new cast. This
flashback could be titled Iraq Agonistes,
except it's no play. It is all too real. For those
are real people suffering and dying, and real
diplomats and generals, presidents and
pundits, senators and senior advisers ... all
proudly displaying their gobsmacked
ineptitude.
There is something eerily, depressingly
familiar about the latest news from the state
formerly known as Iraq as this all too
familiar tragedy is re-enacted in a different
setting with a different suffering people.
The players may have changed, but not the
tragedy. Indeed, the plot is so familiar you
can almost see the audience yawning and
heading for the exits. ("Not this sad show
again!") In these fast-moving or rather fast-
collapsing days for the "republic" of Iraq,
some of us wake up every morning with the
idle thought: Is there still an Iraq? And if so,
who cares?
All the old, blood-soaked scenes of an earlier
performance by the same theatrical company
-- let's dub it the Washington Players -- return
like a recurrent nightmare: the agony of
friends and allies who counted on us only to
be abandoned, the innocents caught in the
crossfire, the usual parade of mutual
atrocities, and a nebulous government whose
power and authority is not just eroding but
disappearing every day, every hour, every
minute. No matter how much its remaining
leaders may deny it.
How long before these leaders, too, become
former leaders and retreat to their villas in
the south of France, and give interviews
explaining how right they were all along?
Much like Jimmy Carter still trying to justify
the malaise he presided over in his now
almost forgotten day.
It's been almost a decade now since peace
was restored after an earlier crisis in Iraq
and then maintained at the cost of still more
American blood and treasure. But now the
violent bear it away again. And we in this
blessed country enable the violent
everywhere by our indifference, aided and
abetted as always by the steady current of
isolationism that flows deep in the American
ethos. We never seem to learn.
From the moment our failing president tried
to justify his hasty withdrawal from Iraq by
telling us everything was just fine and dandy
over there, it hasn't been. And by now things
have grown much worse. But that didn't stop
him from declaring Mission Accomplished:
"Everything that American troops have done
in Iraq -- all the fighting and all the dying,
the bleeding and the building, and the
training and the partnering -- all of it has led
to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a
perfect place. It has many challenges ahead.
But we're leaving behind a sovereign, stable,
and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative
government that was elected by its people." --
Barack Obama, Fort Bragg, N.C., December
14, 2011.
Sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq is now
any anything but, and never has been while
this president was supposedly in charge -- in
large part because of his leadership, or rather
lack of same.
Once again we watch as a demoralized
army's retreat turns into a rout, neighboring
states circle like vultures to pick up the
choicer pieces for themselves, and any
remaining islands of stability and refuge are
overrun -- by a flood of refugees they cannot
cope with.
Even the reactions from Washington are
tinged with the same old excuses for inaction.
These days they come with an almost
desperate air as this administration tries to
evade responsibility for what has happened
in the power vacuum it created when it
decided to withdraw from still another part
of the world. Even if the scenes we recall
today aren't from the Middle but the Far
East.
Remember Saigon 1975? How long will it be
before the television cameras again record
American disgrace as the last panic-stricken
civilians try to clamber aboard the last
helicopter leaving the American embassy, this
time in Baghdad instead of Saigon?
Our president and "commander-in-chief" has
decreed no more boots on the ground in Iraq.
That policy is the big problem. But as that
former country disintegrates, he has relented
to the extent of ordering more troops to
protect our embassy in Baghdad. It's a step
up from the administration's fecklessness at
Benghazi, but only a small step. Let's hope it
will be enough to protect our people now on
the front lines, but hope is scarcely an
adequate substitute for a foreign policy.
Meanwhile, scenes from the tragedy enacted
in Vietnam decades ago continue to recur --
right down to mission creep. The White
House has ordered 300 "military advisers" to
Iraq, which is just the way our misadventure
in Vietnam started. The one thing worse than
a shameful withdrawal overseas may be an
uncertain one that leaves everyone guessing
whether we're leaving or going back in.
This administration, which looks more and
more like only a collection of slow learners,
lacks the one essential requisite for a
thoughtful and effective foreign policy:
constancy of purpose. Instead, an American
administration is reduced once again to buck-
passing as it is obliged to make ad-hoc
decisions in response to one immediate crisis
after another, the total effect of which is to
invite more crises.
Confronted by such disarray in Washington
once again, what useful judgment can any
observer make except a slow, sad shake of the
head? Yes, will we ever learn?
"Stand by your friends, and stand up to
bullies."
--Margaret Thatcher