By Eric Anschutz
You hear a deep-throated roar from the woods behind your house, and you think you may be seeing the movement of animals through the underbrush. You’re not sure what is out there, but you learn from someone who once lived in the woods (he was known as Curveball) that it houses a wild beast known for attacking neighbors. Determined to protect your family against possible if unproven threats, you stalk preemptively into the thicket, armed with your biggest gun. After stomping around for some time, peering behind every tree, you realize there is no wild beast. The roar you heard was wind whistling through tall pines; the rustling movement in the underbrush, you now know, comes from a few innocent deer as they passively munch on leaves and ivy. Timid Bambis, not wild beasts.
So, you are now free to return to a grateful family, all waiting to express admiration for the bravery you displayed in attending to their security and well-being. But, wait, there is a problem. Your search through the dense woods has left you disoriented, darkness has closed in, and it is raining and has gotten cold. You have no idea how to exit the woods, and you become aware that snakes are slithering all around you. Your skin crawls, not only with apprehension, but also because poison oak and poison ivy permeate the woods, and a rash with open sores has afflicted your hands, face and neck.
This may not be an exact analogy to our problems in Iraq, but you get the idea. Bad intelligence, poor execution, unexpected dangers, and no exit plan.
We find ourselves astride a place where everything is beyond our capacity effectively to deal with, let alone to manage. Try to picture Ayatullah Sistani becoming Mayor of New York City; he wouldn’t know where to begin administering an American community. Our military and diplomatic leaders in Iraq, huddled for safety in the Green Zone, have no knowledge of the Iraqi language, the culture, the history, the life style, or the centuries-old hatred between the several religious sects. As our soldiers hand out candy to children, bombs detonate, killing not only the soldiers, but babies and their mothers. Our military vehicles, though wrapped in armor-plate, are routinely attacked on every Iraqi street or highway. Our soldiers, though encased in bullet-proof vests, are vulnerable every time they round a corner or enter a building. Atrocities committed in such places as Abu Ghraib sully the name of America across the world.
Back to exit strategy. There is no victorious or even honorable way out of this morass. It is said, perhaps correctly, that if we leave “immediately,†chaos and civil war will erupt. But chaos and civil war are already present. Indeed, it may be that when we leave the insurgents will have nothing further to “insurge†against. They currently kill Iraqi civilians with impunity – but their targets (they say) are those Iraqi’s who cooperate with US forces. With US forces out of the picture, Iraqi police (now targeted by insurgents) would become the local authority – they would no longer be perceived as minions of US forces who, by then, would be 5,000 miles away and out of the picture.
If, as we are urged by the administration, we stay for another year or two or three, how will things get better? The threat will not lessen; we certainly will not kill all the insurgents. New ones appear every day. What evidence is there that we will be more successful in the future than we have been in the two-plus years already spent in our futile attempt to suppress the insurgency? As we continue or ramp up our war against insurgents, more civilians will be lost to collateral damage, and that inevitability will turn ever more Iraqis against us, thereby further swelling the ranks of insurgents.
There seems to be only one exit strategy for the man in the woods. Having determined that there is no wild beast, he must shiver through the cold and rainy night, wait for the first hint of daylight, climb the highest tree, and search for any opening that might lead him to an open road by which he can make his way back home, avoiding snakes as best he can on the way out. Once out, the man in the woods can get back to his domestic responsibilities, which include educating his children, bringing the family budget back into balance, providing health care for the family, repairing his shabby house and attending to the well-being of his aging parents.