Max Boot Has An Epiphany

Max Boot just got back from Iraq and now thinks that "Up close, Iraq gets blurry."

Oh really? Sorry Max, but Iraq has always been more than a bit "blurry" even from afar.

Max's epiphany may be a bit late, but better late than never I guess. His piece comes as close as anything I have read recently to articulating my own angst over the situation. The fact that Iraqi security forces did not cut and run during the violence that followed the Samarra mosque bombing is a hopeful sign. The fact that many of them stood around and watched and that others apparently took off their uniforms and participated is not. The intensity, brutality and sectarianism of that violence is the stuff of despair, yet I take some comfort from the fact that, despite the far greater provocation, this violence was significantly briefer than that triggered by the Danish cartoons.

Afghanistan, it seems, is getting "blurry" as well. The progress toward stability and reconstruction in Afghanistan has always seemed to be far greater than in Iraq. But now, the head of the DIA is bluntly telling Congress that the "[e]scalating insurgent violence in Afghanistan has placed the fledgling government there in greater peril than at any time since the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion in 2001."

I cannot help but think that this danger is due, at least in part, to the decision to go into Iraq. How different things might have been if only Bush had decided to win one war before he started another. To quote myself from a 2004 piece on what might have been:

[Regarding their proposal to invade Iraq,] Bush says to Rummy and Wolfy, "Are you nuts?! As much as I despise Saddam (for both family and geopolitical reasons), two wars (in Afghanistan and against al Queda) are quite enough for now, thank you. Sure he's a bad man, and sure, he hates America (not to mention my family), and sure he wants to get WMDs. But, there's not really all that much evidence that he has WMDs, and even less that he could use them against the United States even he has. The threat is there, of course, but it is not imminent. So, for the moment, I want to do everything I can short of war to keep the international pressure on Saddam but focus our primary efforts on capturing or killing bin Laden, drying up al Queda's sources of support, and winning the war in Afghanistan. You all know I am not a big fan of nation-building. It's just too hard to do. But we got forced into an invasion of Afghanistan and that's where I want to try to set up a functioning democracy; a democracy that will serve both as a model for other Arab nations and a counterweight to both Iran and Iraq. I don't want to try to take on yet another country at the same time. Also, I want to do something real to remove some of the causes of Arab antipathy toward the United States -- something like genuinely supporting the right of Palestinians to their own State. If we go off invading another Arab country we will inevitably dissipate our credibility and our resources, take our eye off the two really important balls -- Afghanistan and al Queda -- and further alienate the Arab world as well as our friends."

Perhaps pursuing that course would not have made any difference. It may be that the relative (very relative) progress in Afghanistan has been due to the fact that Al Queda et al. chose to make their stand in Iraq and that, but for the invasion of Iraq, the level of the Afghan insurgency would have been much greater than it has been. But at least we would have been mired down in only one war, with significantly greater international support both moral and logistical. And, at least that war would have been seen by the Nation and the world to have been far more justified. As such, this course would unquestionably stood a far greater chance of success that what Bush in fact did.

While the "good news" from Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't get the press coverage it almost certainly deserves, I do not doubt that there are positive things is going on in both places. Yet, I want so badly for things to work out in Iraq and Afghanistan that I may well be investing this good news with far more hope than it deserves. Good news -- signs of progress toward stability -- is incremental. It is like building a wall, one brick at a time. Bad news is sudden and devastating -- like blowing up the wall. Eventually, if the wall gets blown up enough times, the brick layers will quit trying. And then there will be nothing but bad news.

My heart wants to believe we are not there yet and that the brick layers will eventually prevail over the bomb throwers. My head tells me I am probably kidding myself. It is hard to build a wall when the bricklayers hate each other and are more concerned about who will own the wall than about whether it gets built.