1115.org

The tragedy of Iraq is perfectly obvious, and perfectly simple, but I just realized that I’ve never actually expressed it in so many words.

The tragedy of Iraq is that the civilians who have been in charge of the war so far (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld) have steadfastly refused to admit – to others certainly, to themselves too presumably – that there is a very real possibility that it may simply not be possible any more to achieve the victory they seek. That no matter what we do, we may not be able to bring about an Iraq that can sustain itself, govern itself, and defend itself, or be an Ally in TWAT to boot, or be a shining example of Democracy for the entire Middle East.

They do not just refuse to admit it today; they have refused to admit it at every point in the trajectory of this misbegotten war.

Let me be perfectly clear. I’m not talking about probabilities, which would take us into the realm of opinion; I’m talking about recognizing it as one possibility, regardless of the probability that you think should be attached to it. Which keeps it firmly in the realm of facts.

So the issue is not how probable one thinks it is that we shall be able to achieve victory, or how probable one thinks it is that victory may be impossible to achieve. The issue is that the cumulative weight of our experience in Iraq certainly suggests at this point – and, arguably, has suggested for a considerable period of time – that it may be impossible to succeed. To refuse to admit and acknowledge that, even as a possibility, is simply irrational.

The civilians who have been in charge of the war so far, and the powerful propaganda machine they command, have worked very hard to propagate the mindset that to even acknowledge this as a possibility is girly-man defeatist at best, and traitorously treasonous at worst. They have demanded that no one in the upper and middle echelons of meaningful decision-making concerning Iraq have any truck with this possibility. This includes the generals on the ground who are actually running the war.

The result: an Iraq policy that has been founded on irrationality, and has therefore been doomed to fail. If you refuse to admit that failure is even a possibility, you cannot by definition take steps to avoid the prospect of that failure. As failure becomes the elephant in the room that no one is allowed to talk about, it also becomes the elephant in the room that no one is allowed to dodge or fight or even sidestep.

The game, of course, ends when the elephant has trampled everyone in the room, every last mover and shaker who’s supposed to be in charge.

To steal some of Bush’s rhetoric (the gods know he has more than enough to spare), there are some who think we are perilously close to that endpoint already. And the movers and shakers are still determined to ignore the elephant. That is the tragedy of Iraq, in a nutshell.