Iraq: the Next Act

Congress and the American people are now caught in a terrible dilemma. It is clear to the majority of each that the war in Iraq is being lost, and that the strategy with which it is being pursued is certain to get more American soldiers killed and likely to further destabilize this strategically critical region. The dilemma is occasioned by the fact that our President is determined to pursue his failed ideas and that their is no really appropriate provision in the Constitution for replacing him.

Lt. Gen William E Odom was an early and prophetic critic of the Iraq war. He also

was head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter. A West Point graduate with a PhD from Columbia, Odom teaches at Yale

He wrote a must-read op-ed column in the Washington Post today called Victory is Not an Option:

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.

Odom is impatient with Congress to get beyond hedging and symbolic gestures. For a start, he says, we need to aknowledge some basic facts:

First of all, it will require, from Congress at least, public acknowledgment that the president's policy is based on illusions, not realities. There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq. Most Americans need no further convincing, but two truths ought to put the matter beyond question:

First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by professional students of the topic. ...

Second, 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.

He next lists what he calls several myths that are used to justify the continuation of the present hopeless policies - you should read them, but near the core of each is the notion that continuation of the policies that have produced this disaster can in any way ameliorate their consequences.

We need to abandon Bush's fantasies, he says, and concentrate on achieving order in the Middle East, something all the states and most parties, except al Quaeda and the other revolutionary ones, desire.

If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would seize the initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually be held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.

If he stays on his present course, he will leave Congress the opportunity to earn the credit for such a turnaround. It is already too late to wait for some presidential candidate for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress cannot act, it, too, will live in infamy.

Bush will not do that, because he is triply a fool, pigheaded, uncomprehending, and messianic. Congress's ability to do anything is very limited, by institutional compostion, by politics, and by the Constitution.

Josh Marshall, who pointed out Odom's article, has some recent posts related to the topic explaining how hard it will be to get meaningful progress out of Congress - especially given the continuing right-wing domination of essentially all the national media. My own suspicion is that impeachment may be the only way, and that can't happen until many more Republicans see the light. Expect at least another year or more on this particular road to hellish disaster.