I’ve thought that one of the weaknesses in the Iraq debate is that some of the most ardent critics of the Iraq war have used the mishandling of the war, and the misconduct that has taken place as evidence that the war is a bad idea.
I’ve written previously that I thought there were several good reasons to go to Iraq, and that I think the world is a better place with Saddam Hussein removed from power, even though I have issues with just how badly our leadership has bungled its handling of the war.
It seems that I’m not alone.
Although he takes a more conservative tack to get there Rafique Tucker has an insightful observation regarding the framing of the war debate:
Many on the Left in this country really can’t seem to move beyond Bush, and many on the right can’t seem to suffer any criticism of him. This war on terror isn’t about Bush. This war doesn’t end when his term is up. We’re in this for the long haul.[...]
I recognize that there are real problems. Civil war may very well come. However, real work has been done by Allied and Iraqi troops. It seems that many in the press can’t resist the “if it bleeds, it leads” impulse, and only seem to focus on the negative. Some take this further, imposing their own antiwar biases on their reporting. This really does happen. Of course, the Bush-friendly press seems to only focus on the favorable coverage, and is less inclined to report the negative. Often these stories are less focused on Iraq, than trying to make Democrats look like the enemy. Their coverage is tainted with pro-war (and pro-Bush) bias, and is just as bad.[...]
The point of all this that all of us need to deal in sense when dealing with these issues. I’ve had enough of both the “Liberals are traitors” mantras, and the “Bush lied, millions died” mantras. Enough of this talk of impeachment. Enough of this talk about prosecuting journalists. This has been said to death but it bears repeating: This war is the central front on the war on terror. It doesn’t matter how we got there, we’re here now, and we must focus on the here and now.
I disagree on a couple of points (e.g., it matters how we got “here” in that if we don’t learn from the mistakes made to date, we’re going to be doomed to repeat the bloody errors), but the conclusion seems sound. Regardless of how much you think things have gone right or wrong in Iraq, there’s a big mess there now as a result of our actions (or inactions). More effort needs to be spent on discussing how that mess can be cleaned up, rather than engaging in election-year bickering on the nature of the mess, or on who should take the blame for the mess.
2 responses so far ↓
1 James Bowman // 22 Mar 2006 at 9:10 pm
“Regardless of how much you think things have gone right or wrong in Iraq, there’s a big mess there now as a result of our actions (or inactions). More effort needs to be spent on discussing how that mess can be cleaned up, rather than engaging in election-year bickering on the nature of the mess, or on who should take the blame for the mess.”
The argument, however, rests on multiple flawed premises. For one, that the mess in Iraq can actually be cleaned up. And the most flawed premise, that the people who should be entrusted with the clean up job should be the same people who made all sorts of promises that turned out to be true, chief among those promises that there would not be much of a mess to begin with — that Iraq would be “self-cleaning”.
The left side of the fence believes that not only are we actually adding to the mess with our presence in Iraq, but that job #1 is getting rid of the incompetent housecleaners. Until the people responsible for the incompetence and planning failures are dismissed from power, talking about a joint cleanup effort is pointless. Any effort in “cleaning” Iraq would come to naught.
2 James Bowman // 22 Mar 2006 at 9:11 pm
That should be “turned out to be not true”. If the promises turned out to be true, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.