| Vol. 3 No. 8 April 17, 2008 |
| I’ve been meaning to write this column, but the time has just slipped away. Imagine State Street with armed police at every corner and walking patrols, kind of like they do at tourist destinations in some third world countries, just to make sure the tourists aren’t jostled and they keep spending their money. State Street is calm and peaceful, even on a Saturday night around bar time. People come and go freely under the watchful eye of the police. State Street violence and drunkenness have disappeared. The city elders declare that the problems of State Street are solved as its crime rate goes down to almost zero. An election is pending and although the city cannot afford to keep the police on State Street — the cost is astronomical and the city is borrowing money continuously to keep the police there — the police remain so that the city elders can claim that they have made progress in the fight against crime and the gangs that perpetuate those crimes. The problem is “solved” but the city elders dare not reduce the police presence lest the violence begins once again. Meanwhile, in a hamlet that borders the city, violence has been skyrocketing. Drug use is running rampant and the gangs are having their way with the local citizenry. It’s the gang’s base from which they had originally expanded to State Street and laid siege to the city. Now the city would gladly send some of its police over to the small hamlet, but that would necessitate taking some of the police from State Street and who knows what that might lead to on State Street before the election. And so for the sake of appearance and the fear of losing political power, the city elders allow the situation to stagnate without dealing with the underlying problems that exist. This is pretty much how I see the U.S. position in Iraq. Substitute Baghdad for State Street, the police for the military forces participating in the recent surge, Afghanistan for the nearby hamlet and the Bush administration for the city elders and there you go: the mess in Iraq and the failure to root out terrorism in Afghanistan. While the surge seemed to work to curb the violence — although recent events seem to bring that assessment into question — it hasn’t addressed the underlying problems and fissures that are Iraq. The reductions in violence sure make John McCain look good for the November elections — he has been supporting the Bush policies in Iraq — but it all might be an illusion that helps the Republicans retain control of the White House. Nothing has been solved. No meaningful policies have been passed by a bitterly-divided Iraqi government. There are no signs that we will ever be able to leave Iraq flashing the sign “Mission Accomplished” as Bush foolishly did five years ago. We could be mired in Iraq for years with no way out. The only meaningful solution is for us to set a timeline for withdrawal and give the Iraqi government all the help we can muster to get their house in order for only then would they act like it truly is do or die. Our shaky economy, generous tax cuts to the wealthy and small tax rebates to the rest of us that we are dutifully supposed to turn over to Wal-Mart are driving our government into bankruptcy. This war in Iraq is costing us our freedom for the sake of oil that will be sold to the highest bidder. I would like to know where the Iraqi oil dollars are going now. They certainly don’t seem to be going into making repairs to Iraq’s electrical system. It isn’t producing gasoline for Iraq’s domestic consumption. Where is the money going? Certainly the oil is flowing because when there was disruption in Basra the other week to an oil pipeline, the price of a barrel of oil went higher on the international oil speculation market. So where is all the money going as we pump more and more money into Iraq? Is it flowing to the Swiss bank accounts of Iraqi ministers? Or is it flowing into the off-shore accounts of Halliburton and other conglomerates involved in this Iraq fiasco. Why do I feel someone has been picking my pockets clean ever since we invaded Iraq? The Iraq War is a war that we can never win, anymore than the British could have come into the U.S. and changed the course of the American Civil War through occupation. It seems that the Iraq War has served everybody’s interests except the interests of peace in Iraq. We need to get out of this bottomless pit that claims too many U.S. dollars and Iraqi and American lives. And I resent the manipulation of the events in Iraq for the sake of retaining political power. As a nation, we cannot economically and spiritually afford it. |
| Reflections/Jonathan Gramling Random thoughts on Iraq |