I've Started, So I'll Finish

Recently, there have been calls in the US (finally) for the winding-down of the war and the return of her hard-worn troops. The current occupant of the White House has recently made noises about it.

This is the one thing America cannot, must not do.

Along with this has come a lot of crap about who voted how on the war: "Did you support it? Do you think you were wrong to do so?" with all the co-accusatorial cross-politics this implies.

I'm in an awkward position. I knew the war was wrong, but supported it broadly because I couldn't believe that anyone would deliberately lie just to avenge his dad and create 100,000 dead Iraqis. As the WMD cover story unravelled, I slewed around one hundred and eighty degrees. I consider myself once bitten, twice opposed.

But the one thing the US cannot do is cut and run. Having destroyed the most stable institution in Iraq--the Baathist dictatorship they fought so hard to establish in the first place--they are left with the painful realization that a tradition and groundswell of support for democratic governance do not come overnight.

The warning signs are all over Russia, should anyone care to look. Even Italy has a government that we in North America would consider high-handed and overbearing, and let's not get started on France. Part of the mistake was in trying to give US-style democracy (which most of the world, oddly, eschews for more directed models) to people who have never had any say in their own lives. They were promised bread and circuses, but didn't realise they'd be eating it in a bomb shelter.

The Chinese say that once you pick up a stray kitten, you become responsible for the cat it will become. Iraq is George the Impaler's kitten (no speculation as to what a man who brands humans would do to a kitten). In a carefully orchestrated speech on Iraq made to cadets at Annapolis Naval Academy Bush II made the statement that America would stay the course so long as he was president.

The speech was called "significant" by his aides--just like eight of his latest speeches to selected audiences.He made no promises about going there personally, nor did he say what happens after he gets booted out next election.

I'm glad to see America questioning its role, goals, and morality, finally. But the reason given for returning the troops is to save US lives. What about Iraqi ones? Is the sacrifice of over 50,000 Iraqi civillian casualties to be in vain?

It's too late to back out now. Having picked up this particular kitten, and having backed their president (by about a 2:1 majority) Americans need to live up to the awesome responsibility of taking a community of uninspired fatalists and turning it into an active and engaged democracy.

If they leave within the next five years, the kitten is likely to grow up into a rabid dog.