[Mb-civic] Call It a Day - Andrew J. Bacevich - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Call It a Day
We've Done All We Can Do in Iraq

By Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, August 21, 2005; Page B01

The banner decorating the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, when 
President Bush announced an end to "major combat operations" in Iraq, 
turns out to have been accurate after all. If only the president himself 
had taken to heart the banner's proclamation of "Mission Accomplished." 
For by that date, having deposed Saddam Hussein, the United States had 
achieved in Iraq just about all that it has the capacity to achieve. The 
time has come for Bush to dig the banner out of the closet, drape it 
across the front of the White House and make it the basis for policy 
instead of continuing under the inglorious banner of "Mission Impossible."

Ironically, ever since the presidential victory lap of two years ago, 
the Bush administration has been in the forefront of those insisting 
that the U.S. mission in Iraq is not accomplished -- that there is ever 
so much more that the United States can and must do on behalf of the 
Iraqi people. Hence the grandiose U.S. promises of reconstruction, 
economic and political reform, and nation-building.

The chief effect of efforts to fulfill these promises has been to 
convert a short, economical and purportedly glorious war into a long, 
costly and debilitating one.

Moreover, senior U.S. military leaders have increasingly concluded that 
the long war is an unwinnable one. "[T]his insurgency is not going to be 
settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be 
settled, through military options or military operations," Brig. Gen. 
Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, 
acknowledged earlier this summer. "It's going to be settled in the 
political process." However self-serving it may be -- the military's 
eagerness to offload responsibility for the course of events in Iraq has 
become palpable of late -- Alston's analysis is correct.

Alas, the Bush administration adamantly insists that any such political 
process can only proceed with constant American coaching and oversight. 
Underlying this insistence is the assumption, seldom voiced openly, that 
the Iraqi people are incapable of managing their own affairs. They need us.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/20/AR2005082000114.html?nav=hcmodule
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