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Volume CXXXIII, Number 10 |
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Turning back would be irresponsible; We've gone too far
GIL BARNDOLLAR
CONTRIBUTOR
Despite the patriotism and solidarity engendered by September 11 and the invasion of Iraq, our domestic consensus on Iraq may be beginning to fray. The media picture is overwhelmingly bleak, as "if it bleeds it leads" remains the motto in newsrooms and TV stations around the country. One shudders to think what the United States might have done a half-century ago if the papers had covered each death on Omaha Beach or Guadalcanal as minutely as they do today's casualties in Iraq.
At the time of this writing, the US death toll in Iraq stands at 423 and rises daily. Two-thirds of US casualties have occurred since major combat operations were declared over in May, and a recent CIA memo stated that Iraqi resistance is stiffening and Iraqis are increasingly supportive of the pro-Saddam insurgents. Taliban forces remain in Afghanistan, and most of the country has reverted to the control of independent warlords. In spite of all this, America could make no bigger mistake today than to hastily withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Whatever one thinks of America's original intentions and aims when launching the invasion of Iraq (and this week's edition of the Weekly Standard makes the links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda increasingly ironclad), the fact is that we are now responsible for the rebuilding and rebirth of a nation of 30 million. Iraq has been beaten down by three decades of tyranny, its oil wealth going toward tanks and secret police salaries instead of the to welfare of its people. The prostrate Iraq before us, closer to freedom than it has ever been, is also completely vulnerable. Were we to pull out, whether immediately or after a hasty attempt to cobble together an Iraqi government and security force, we would leave the country in the hands of the same band of murderers, thieves, and rapists we just pushed out of power. Ironically, a few months of Bush's bullets and bombs have saved more women from sexual assault than all the faddish "V-Day" celebrations ever will.
Likewise, in forgotten Afghanistan, increasingly undermanned and under-funded coalition troops are the only thing standing between tentative Afghan freedom and the restoration of a medieval theocracy. If the last American were to leave Kabul today, the city would have burqas and public executions tomorrow.
The United States has a moral duty to see the job through to the end in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless of the stumbling blocks along the way, we have liberated tens of millions from two of the most odious regimes of the twentieth century. If we leave now, millions of people will just as surely again knuckle under to dictators. We need only look to Vietnam to see the price of taking the easy way out. The damage to American prestige from withdrawing from a difficult war is huge, but the real cost is borne by the friends we abandon. In South Vietnam, that cost could be calculated: 60,000 executions, hundreds of thousands dead in re-education camps, and a million on refugee boats people. As David Gelernter recently noted in the Los Angeles Times (of all places), we should be haunted in Iraq by Vietnam, haunted "by the fact that a noisy, self-important, narcissistic minority talked the United States into betraying its allies."
There will be a price to pay for doing the right thing, for ensuring that generations of Iraqi and Afghan children grow up in freedom. With our forces spread thin around the globe, more and more Americans are being called into service. Almost everyone knows a soldier or knows someone who does. I have a good friend from high school serving in Afghanistan, and my roommate's 19 year-old brother is shipping out to Iraq with the National Guard in a matter of weeks. Just three days ago, while on a train from New York to Boston, the woman sitting across from me told me that her cousin, who makes nearly a million dollars a year as a surgeon, had to leave for Afghanistan the next week because of his Army Reserve obligations. The cost of this war will be shouldered by all Americans. Our national will should be stiffened, however, by the knowledge that each American life lost saves hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqi or Afghan lives. We owe it to the millions we have liberated to stay the course. To leave them behind now would be the most craven of betrayals.
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