Declare Victory And Leave
Administration Claims Killing Leads To Peace
POSTED: 3:23 pm CST December 3, 2004
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/3970162/detail.html The same rationale is being invoked by a U.S. officialdom that insists we have to stay in Iraq to fight the resistance there. Even those opposed to the war now say we can't leave because a catastrophe would ensue if we were to depart.
Casualty figures continue to rise, but the administration that committed the United States to this senseless folly is content to let others pay the price. More than 1,200 Americans have died, thousands more have been wounded. Thousands of Iraqis -- fighters and civilians -- have been killed.
It's beyond the courage of the American leadership to admit it was wrong to invade a country under false pretenses and to stay there by force. But at some point, the U.S. leadership may have to 'fess up. This may come when, as veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges put it, "The reality of war is so revolting and horrifying that if we did see war it would be hard for us to wage it."
McClellan did the best he could to create a facade of international support, which doesn't exist in the real world, for the U.S. occupation.
The United States did not invade Iraq out of some great humanitarian compassion to protect the Iraqi people, nor did the administration defend the invasion on those grounds early on. (Remember how Iraq was an imminent threat with weapons of mass destruction targeted to destroy us?) Nor did the Iraqis ask for us to save them from Saddam.
Sorry, McClellan can't rewrite history with his pitch that the international community is behind the United States in Iraq. The major European allies -- except for Britain -- have shied away from this misadventure. Ukraine's parliament voted 257-0 this week to pull the country's 1,600 troops out of Iraq. The vote was non-binding but symbolic of the reality that the Bush administration tries to ignore when it describes the "coalition" that occupies Iraq.
To those who warn that it would be inhumane and wrong to leave Iraq soon, I ask: What's so humane about sticking around and killing again and again?
(Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com).