Victory Fantasy

On Meet The Press last weekend, Bush Administration mouthpieces including Senator Joe Lieberman and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley came out in support of the Bush troop surge.

In his usual whiny cadence, Lieberman mumbled to Tim Russert of the Bush plan, “It’s a plan to win in Iraq, and I believe we still can.”

Leaving aside that Joe Lieberman is a walking caricature—a bizarrely awkward man whose statements are often so ridiculous, off-putting and bereft of common sense that his reelection was nothing short of astonishing—what does his strange mind imagine when it contemplates winning in Iraq?

On the Bush perspective, Stephen Hadley agreed with Lieberman, saying of Iraq that, "...both of us have an interest in success. The costs of failure are just too high." He went on to note that, "...the president understands the American people are tired of this war."

Wrong. The American people are tired of the lies, distortions, bad decisions and incompetence that shaped Iraq into a disaster of historic proportions. And they have no faith that the President and his civilian leaders can suddenly “succeed” in Iraq after a long seige of failure.

Despite years of rhetoric and propaganda to the contrary, Iraq is not a war. It is an occupation and police action. We are fighting a “war” of sorts against al-Qaeda, but Iraq has much less to do with terrorism than it has to do with nation building and forced democracy. Because we are occupying a nation as a de facto security force, Americans understand that “victory” is not the proper term to be using. There is nothing to “win.”

So until the small and shrinking group of stalwart administration officials, including cheerleader Lieberman, grasp the fact that winning and victory have become meaningless—as the American public already has—they will continue to make historic blunder after historic blunder.

We only have two forms of real influence left in Iraq. Our munitions and our occupation. Clearly, we cannot bomb Iraq into peace. Indeed, the more force we use, the worse the situation gets for all involved. Our only other leverage is our physical presence. When we threaten to begin to withdraw, Iraqi politicians and moderates will truly face up to the prospect of an Iraq without our troops. Whether Iraqis will then come together has always been, and will ever remain, beyond our control. If our withdrawal unleashes full-blown genocide (as opposed to the small-scale genocide currently occurring every day in Iraq), the UN should step in and try to do what our inept and bungling leaders failed to do—put together a coalition of nations to shepherd a resolution.

Sadly, because of the arrogance and rancor of the Bush approach to invasion, nobody will come to the aid of Iraq until we are gone and humiliated.

Every time you hear a deluded hawk talk about “winning” in Iraq, they are really talking about the victory of fantasy over reality, of spin over truth. George Bush was stupid enough to stir a hornet's nest and twenty thousand additional troops will do nothing to get the hornets back in the hive. What idiots.

- JT Compton