The story of the recent death of Andrew J. Bacevich is now on many blogs.
THE GOP FAILURE TO 'RE-PURPOSE' THE RHETORIC OF THE WAR
After WMD were not found in Iraq, the only prime reason to continue on in Iraq was to give the Iraqi people a chance to restore their civic life.
Rather than adopt this purpose, the GOP political war-machine went on into the 2004 election still with enough traction on other reasons that were all ... empty, I guess. Put another way, their ideological biases, the public's willingness to go along with them, and the indelicate anti-war posture of many have cut out this, the only rhetorical, 'win-win' frame.
Now, even among the cognoscenti, we have numerous commentators discerning the death of Professor Bacevich's son as more proof of "this horrible, self-damaging crusade".
THE HISTORY OF THE US CHAPTER IN IRAQ WILL LAST FOR DECADES
I believe that every drop of American blood that is sacrificed in Iraq ennobles the very cause that we rhetorically deny to ourselves, in the current zeal to reign in a failed wartime President, his cook, and his gardener (you know who they are) who long ago lost their capacity to lead, rhetorically and otherwise.
The chapter of what the US did and tried to do in Iraq will reverberate in the region for years to come, even if it were to close immediately, because of the orientation to history that inflects the collective understanding in the region. (Fawaz Gerges is one scholar who has written on the role and importance of the interpretation of history).
In short, the dominant narratives that emerge from the Iraqi conflict are important and will be for a long time. Yet, the US seems unable to be an active participant in shaping them.
The 'jihad' and others have broadly attacked the effort in Iraq as 'illegitimate' and as purely self-interest (which includes 'Zionist interest'). The cost of the war has now eliminated the arguments about self-interest, especially the one about 'stealing Iraq's oil', which is no longer heard, much. "Illegitimacy" we often hand to them on a silver platter, in both large and small ways.
As a matter of course, then, I'd rather write about how each soldier's death, including Andrew Bacevich's, is our Nation's "core" truth against the very nature of "jihad" as it is conceived by, say, al-qaeda, because we are willing to do what no Frenchman did, namely stand-up with others who might fight it head on (even if we misconceived or poorly strategized about that fight as it relates to pre-war Iraq). With some changes, the same argument is true for the age-old 'refuseniks' attitude among those giving 'spiritual direction' to the Sunni insurgency, outside of the al-qaeda ideology.
That doesn't mean that there might not be a time to withdraw from any specific effort, such as Iraq. Even if we withdraw unthanked, as most likely we will, given how double-faced narratives 'protect' the psyche in the region, the 'win-win' formulation is undiminished.
THIS CAUSE THAT WE HAVE THUS FAR SO NOBLY ADVANCED
But, even to this day, I refuse to accept that every death reinforces a notion that the continuation after WMD was "wrong" or "a mistake". Of course, there is waste and blundering and miscalculation going on, even profoundly on some issues, but criticizing all that is quite different than impugning the effort in such a way as to not even fight the war of ideas, to just concede it, practically wholesale.
In sum, I say, Andrew Bacevich fought to give a chance to the Iraqi people to restore their civic life, to throw off the bondage of any number of would be political masters, fought even against great odds and against the powerful tools of random violence, intimidation, and kidnapping. What can the jihad say they have done? They blew up people at the markets, for nothing. What can the Sunni insurgency say it has done in the name of Allah? They fought and killed men who weren't even their sworn enemies, who promised to give them a polity of their own and to leave them to it.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Andrew J. Bacevich and the story of the Long War
