A Comrade With Whom I Agree Regarding Iraq

I'm against leaving; Ted Rall is for it only because he has no faith we -- well, Our Leaders -- can do the right thing and do it properly. He's right about that but still....

First, the good reason to invade Iraq: Penance.

Saddam Hussein was a creation of the United States, armed and financed by the Reagan and Bush 41 Administrations, which used Iraq to wage a devastating proxy war against the new Islamic republic of Iran during the 1980s. Saddam's torture and murder of thousands of Kurds took place under Reagan-Bush's watch.

International reaction to the March 2003 invasion might have been downright favorable if Bush 43 had said something like this: "We Americans have a shameful history of propping up dictators. That policy is no more. Today we go to Baghdad to remove a tyrant we supported, but Saddam is only the beginning of our responsibility to clean up the messes our
CIA has made around the world. After Iraq, our armed forces will remove U.S.-backed autocrats in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakh...um, I'll post a list on the White House website."

Second, the good reason to stay in Iraq: Human rights.

If stopping the genocides in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and now the Darfur region of Sudan was the right thing to do, why not in Iraq? Soldiers and militia irregulars loyal to the U.S.-installed Maliki regime are carrying out genocidal ethnic cleansing against Iraq's Sunni minority. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis have been murdered. Millions have been evicted from their homes at gunpoint, forced to flee for the border with nothing but the clothes on their backs. It is our humanitarian obligation to help them, not least because our war started the bloodletting.

Third, the right way to stay in Iraq: Colonialism.

We have 150,000 troops in Iraq. They're stretched so thin that many are now on their third or fourth deployments. There aren't enough of them to control the streets; even the Baghdad airport road is owned by the insurgents. After Bush's "surge," there will be a mere 170,000, still far short of the 400,000 to 500,000 General Eric Shinseki got himself fired as Army Chief of Staff for daring to suggest would be needed to secure occupied Iraq.

Security is the key to everything: economic recovery, political stability, ending sectarian violence. U.S.-enforced martial law and nighttime curfews can keep death squads and insurgents off the streets, creating the conditions that will eventually encourage investment, a free press and the rise of a modern nation-state. But the killers can only be kept at bay if American forces are present on every single street in every town, 24-7. To pull that off in a country the size of Iraq, Shinseki's estimate is, if anything, too conservative.

Of course, this "flood the zone" strategy would ultimately prove fruitless after the eventual American withdrawal. The religious fanatics and other factions who are driving the disintegration of Iraq would merely wait our departure, then fight anew. So there's only one logical conclusion: Don't ever leave.

Forget spreading democracy. If we're serious about dominating the Middle East and access to its oil and gas we have to turn Iraq into a permanent colony like Puerto Rico. As the Brits did in their Indian Raj, America ought to encourage ambitious men and women to seek their fortunes in U.S.-occupied Mesopotamia. They should marry the locals and start families and patrol the streets as part of a new national draft.

What's that, you say? Young Americans don't want to move to Iraq? The United States doesn't have the troops to triple or quadruple our current commitment? Americans don't want to pour trillions of dollars into a hellhole where hundreds of billions have already disappeared?
I've felt exactly the same way--since 2001. Which is why I've been against this endeavor from the beginning. America doesn't have the will, or the budget, to do Iraq right.

The rest is here.