A Line in the Sand

I've carried around a terrible secret for years. Now I'm ready to confess. I supported the invasion of Iraq, and I support a continued troop presence there for the foreseeable future.

My reasons for supporting the war had nothing to do with the leadup rhetoric, which was an obvious put-on. I've known we were going to invade ever since I heard Rumsfeld was made Sec State. Giveaway. Not that anybody listens to me. Other days it just rains.

Let me explain why I think we should stay in Iraq. It's the easier position to defend.

I will never forget that day two years ago when I learned about Abu Ghraib. I was telling my girlfriend how disappointed I was seeing the strategic posibilites of the invasion slip away. She asked if I still thought the invasion was a good idea. Consoling myself, I said, "Well, at least there aren't any more mass graves or torture-chambers." And she said, "Except ours."

We made a "mistake." It's the kind of mistake ethical philosophers generally refer to as a "moral abomination." We did a Very Bad Thing. We took a reasonably stable if obscenely governed nation and turned it into a viper's den of sectarian violence. We've killed their innocents tenfold or more in vengeance for the innocents lost on 9/11. We've made a wasteland and called it peace. While fighting monsters, we have become ourselves monsters. "Mission Accomplished." I'm not referring to the invasion. I'm referring to the occupation and reconstruction.

We've stood by and watched as Neo-Cons applied their endless get-rich-quick schemes to foreign policy, at the cost of every interest America has in the region. Bremmer and his business cronies descended on the cradle of civilization like AmWay salesmen with depleted uranium calling cards. These greedy fools have turned one of the most secular states in the Arab world into the premier breeding-ground for Islamist extremism. And we let them.

Most of all, we've been Good Germans. We've sat and listened for the last five years as the President explained again and again that, "We're fighting 'them' over there so that we don't have to fight them here." In all that time, no one thought to ask how the Iraqis felt about us making their country a football in the latest game of Who-Rules-the-Planet. It never even occurred to us to consider things from the sand-niggers' point of view.

Now, it's time to repent. Our penance will surely be paid in blood, broken dreams and shattered families. But we have no right to flinch from it. We chose this war. Our duty now is not the liberation of the Iraqi people, but the containment of the demons we've unleashed. The single biggest threat to peace in the region today is Iraq. We did that. Now we must stand in the face of that threat as a wall against the sea. It's not enough to sit around apologizing to our grandchildren for our leaders' mistakes. We must act now. We must do what is right in the place where we are.

We decided we'd rather fight "them" over there. We said, "Bring 'em on!" Well, they came. Iraq has become the premier recruitment center and training-ground for new mujahadin, and it has begun exporting terror to the rest of the world. At this point, there are two probable end-games:

1) We keep troops on the ground in Iraq. The Iraqis overcome the limitations of the constitution we bequeathed them. They achieve a sufficiently unified government to drive out the insurgency. Notice I said "drive out," not "stamp out." Iraqi-trained jihadis return to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Yemen to avenge these states' collusion with America. At the end of the day, Al-Qaida is immeasurably strengthened, Iran has its first vassal-state in the Arab world, and America is the most mistrusted and reviled nation on earth.

2) We leave. Iraq becomes divided into three semi-autonomous regions. Ethnic cleansing turns contested areas into no-man's-lands. The country descends into civil war. Turkey invades the Kurdish north to prevent the formation of a unified Kurdistan. Iran enters southern Iraq in support of Shiite sectarians. Syria moves troops into central Iraq in support of the beleaguered Sunni population. Baghdad becomes the flash-point in a massive race-war between Turk, Arab and Persian over the future leadership of the Muslim world.

I keep thinking about George Bush's acknowledged personal reason for invading Iraq: "That man tried to kill my daddy." And then I think what a thousand mothers' sons will do to us one day, if we allow things to continue the way they're going. And all I can say is: We have to draw a line in the sand. We have to fight them there, so we don't lose to them everywhere.