It’s been two years since Saddam Hussein was hung.
While I am opposed to the death penalty on principle, I have to admit it is hard to mourn his passing.
Still, noting the moment does set me to thinking a bit about Mr Bush’s war.
We sit at an interesting place, the confluence of the surge and the awakening has given the Iraqi government a bit of breathing room and provides us with a fig leaf to allow us for a second time to declare victory and to withdraw.
I wish my nay saying and that of the left in general is wrong, and that the terrible cost, as the preferred language today has it, in blood and treasure (or the slightly sanitized version, lives and treasure), will lead to another democratic state in the Near East. But I find it highly unlikely.
The current corrupt regime is merely one of several factions that will almost certainly fall upon each other in the wake of our departure. The more likely scenarios are either a new military dictatorship, a theocratic dictatorship or the fragmenting of the state into three or so parts…
And our staying is simply shoring up that corrupt faction while draining our resources of both treasure and blood…
In the meantime our at least justifiable invasion of Afghanistan has through neglect at the critical moment opened a maw that may well become our next Vietnam. I believe that the last successful invasion of that country was by Alexander. It is famous as the place empires go to die…
Things look pretty bleak to me…
It makes me wonder if our real attention shouldn’t rather be focused on finding a workable peace between Israel and Palestine.
If there is no peace there, I doubt if there can be peace anywhere else in that part of the world.
But it would take a bit more clarity from the incoming administration than I fear they’re going to be up for.
The premise, I believe, would have to be that Israel is a fact on the ground, that its people have a right to exist and they have a right to secure borders. And, that Palestine has a right to exist and they have a right to a viable national integrity.
(I suspect among the things each side must surrender includes the Israeli settlements beyond its 1967 boundaries (with only the most minor adjustments) and the Palestinian right of return (in exchange for substantial financial subsidy). Jerusalem almost certainly needs to become an international city and the capital of both nations. Let it live up to the meaning of its name…)
But those are not even the hardest parts. Both sides have much blame to carry. Each has perpetrated terrible things upon the other. And each carry deep wounds that will be hard to ignore. And both recoil at any suggestion of moral equivalency in this. The hardest thing, maybe impossible is surrendering our hatred of the other…
And for us, we need to give up one-sided support. This includes giving up romantic views of either Israel or Palestine. If our nation, that is the American nation, is to be that beacon of hope for the world, that has been its abiding story, and which once again we saw in spite of everything else, in our recent national election; its job is to become a genuinely honest broker, striving to create two secure and prospering nations where now there is such sorrow.
If we can do that, then, perhaps, just maybe, the current of history can turn, just enough to avoid a flood of blood and horror for many, a flood that if we fail in this enterprise, will no doubt wash over us, as well…
Not a lot of hope in this.
But a little…
And, just maybe, enough…
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In