In November 2005 I wrote about Jack Murtha’s call for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq:
A couple of months ago I was deeply moved by the tragic story of two
fathers and their ninth-grade daughters who were hiking in the Cascade
mountains near Seattle. One of the girls while swimming in a river
there got caught in a downcurrent near a waterfall. Her father jumped
in to save her, and he was also caught in the downcurrent. The other
father then jumped in, and he was caught as well. All three drowned
leaving one of the girls alone on the river bank.Does anyone reading this believe that the girl should have jumped in
to try to save her father? Does anybody believe that if there were
another adult there, he should have jumped in? I hope not. And yet does
anybody believe that if anyone were in that poor girl’s position, he
would question for the rest of his life whether he should have? That’s
the definition of survivor’s guilt. Making the sane decision, but
always feeling that you made the wrong choice. It’s normal human
psychology in such a situation. It’s not a good feeling. We’d rather
not have to have it. We’d much rather a scenario in which were able to
have done something actively to effect a more positive outcome. But
sometimes it just isn’t possilbe, and you have to face facts sanely.
Thank God that girl had enough sense not to jump in to try to save her
father. The rest of her family and all of her friends are so grateful
that she made the sane choice.I think that we Americans are in a position similar to anyone left
standing on that river bank. We are moved by the nobility of those who
have sacrificed their lives trying to do what they believed was the
right thing, but there comes a point where further sacrifices are
futile. We don’t honor the dead by pointlessly adding to their number.This was a war that I never supported. Once we entered Baghdad, I
thought we had a responsibility to leave the place better than we found
it. I never trusted the Bush administration’s motives; I never
believed the war’s neocon architects really cared about the Iraqi
people. I never thought, therefore, that they had the mentality to
make a decent job of it there. This would have been an enormously
difficult undertaking for even the most competent of administrations to
have undertaken. But you had to hope for the best, and I did. It’s
clear now that the Bush people never had a chance.Our problem
is that we have the wolf by the ears. We can’t hold it forever, and we
can’t let it go. We need help, and this administration has put itself
in a position in which nobody wants to give it. His administration is
neither liked nor trusted, and now it isn’t even feared. This is why
the sensible thing would have been to put Kerry, creep though he is, in
office. He would have had at least some chance of developing a
multilateral solution there–we’re not the only ones who have an
interest in stabilizing the region. But Bush has no chance.We’re past hoping for the best now. If there were any reasonable
chance that this administration could make things better, there might
be some sense in sticking it out. But if there is no chance that we
can do anything but make things worse, we should get out. As long as
Bush is in office, I am convinced that making things worse is the only
possibility. Perhaps another administration could have had a chance,
but we chose to keep Bush in office. As long as he’s there, we are
pointlessly sending our kids into the river to drown. I think that’s
all Jack Murtha is saying.
Well, Bush is still holding the wolf by the ears, he’s still isolated, and he’s not strong enough or smart enough to kill it. He’s doing everything he can to postpone getting bit in the behind when inevitably he has to let it go and run for the nearest tree.
But the drowning metaphor is more to the point, especially from the Iraqi perspective. Iraq is drowning, and George Bush is responsible for it because he released the floodgates naively thinking he was doing so to clean out some unwanted filth. But like the sorcerer’s apprentice, he was a fool who didn’t know what he was doing, and things have gotten so far out of control, there’s nothing he can do. It’s time for older wiser heads to come in and clean up the mess he’s made. Only problem is he’s so stupid and stubborn, he won’t let them.
I can understand why he cannot bring himself to acknowledge that nothing more can be done to "win" in Iraq. How could he live with himself for the rest of his life knowing what he and his cronies have done. The shame of it would be overwhelming. He’s desperate not to have to face that kind of retirement. So that’s why it shouldn’t be up to him. He’s got personal reasons to want to keep fighting on, and he’s the last person to be trusted with what’s in the best interest of the country. American policy right now should not have to be about saving Jr.’s ass.
That’s why I’m glad he’s delaying this Iraq policy speech. We all know what’s coming, something along the McCain line of idiocy about sending more troops to see if they can wrestle the wolf down. Such a policy will fail and it just postpones the inevitable. But the longer he delays, the more time it gives for the Democratic opposition to develop some strength to oppose him. I’m not sure it will, but that’s the country’s only hope. Bush will do everything in his power to postpone the day of reckoning. And it won’t come unless the Democrats in alliance with the grey heads in the ISG establishment force it.
I don’t thing there’s any question that we have a moral obligation to Iraq. We opened the floodgates that destroyed their country, and we owe them big time. We can talk about what that means on a practical level another time, but ordering more soldiers to Iraq is like ordering that girl to jump in the torrent to save her father and friends. It’s tragic. It’s horrifying. And all Americans who stood by, whether cheering or passively, and watched as this fool turned the wheel to release the flood are culpable, but we don’t owe the Iraqis more futilely wasted American lives. And Bush, while he may have the technical legal authority, no longer has the moral authority to send more Americans to their deaths to defend his foolishness. My fear is that I’ll be posting this column from a year ago a year from now, and nothing will have changed. Just the toll of the dead.
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