LAT op-ed, "Iraq Hasn't Even Begun": Bush fell "slap-bang" into bin Laden's trap

Iraq hasn't even begun
Consequences from the disaster we could have avoided will plague the world long into the future.
By Timothy Garton Ash
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is a contributing editor to "Opinion," is professor of European studies at Oxford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
July 19, 2007

....Iraq is over insofar as the American public has decided that most U.S. troops should leave....Although the Democrats did not get the result they wanted in an all-night marathon on the floor of the Senate, from Tuesday to Wednesday this week, no one in Washington doubts that this is the way the wind blows....

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But Iraq has not yet begun. Not yet begun in terms of the consequences for Iraq itself, the Middle East, the United States' own foreign policy and its reputation in the world. The most probable consequence of rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in its present condition is a further bloodbath, with even larger refugee flows and the effective dismemberment of the country. Already, about 2 million Iraqis have fled across the borders, and more than 2 million are internally displaced....

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For the United States, the world is now, as a result of the Iraq war, a more dangerous place. At the end of 2002, what is sometimes tagged "Al Qaeda Central" in Afghanistan had been virtually destroyed, and there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq. In 2007, there is an Al Qaeda in Iraq, parts of the old Al Qaeda are creeping back into Afghanistan and there are Al Qaeda emulators spawning elsewhere, notably in Europe.

Osama bin Laden's plan was to get the U.S. to overreact and overreach itself. With the invasion of Iraq, Bush fell slap-bang into that trap. The U.S. government's own latest National Intelligence Estimate, released this week, suggests that Al Qaeda in Iraq is now among the most significant threats to the security of the American homeland....

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Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have done terrible damage to the U.S. reputation for being humane; this defeat will convince more people around the world that it is not even that powerful. And Bin Laden, still alive, will claim another victory over the death-fearing weaklings of the West....(A)s far as the human eye can see, the likely consequences of Iraq range from the bad to the catastrophic....

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-garton19jul19,0,6963317.story?track=mostviewed-storylevel

Those people were some of the original neocons. I'm stunned.

Bush fell into his own claptrap.