Broken Beyond Repair

Today, Kevin Drum said something that got me thinking: "Iraq has been so mismanaged that almost anything we do now will be disastrous."

I think he's right; more than that, his claim should be blindingly obvious to anyone who has been paying attention. And yet there are a lot of "serious", "tough-minded" people who think that it is still possible to win this war. Granted, the bar for winning has been lowered a lot in the past three years, from "transformational, world-historical event" to "lots of people not getting blown up every day." But still — why are there still people who think it is possible to snatch victory from the gaping jaws of this ongoing disaster?

I can only imagine that it has to do with the fact that for some (and by "some", I mean the Bush Administration, most of the conservative punditocracy, and a good chunk of the wingnut base), America in principle has the power and will to do anything it wants — nothing is beyond this country's reach. In the case of Iraq, we might be down, but we're never out. Until we decide to "cut-n-run" (lose the will to use our power), victory is always possible. The war might have been mismanaged, mistakes might have been made, but it's never too late to turn things around.

This belief in American omnipotence is, to say the least, just plain crazy. The problem is in the premise that force and will alone are sufficient. They simply aren't. Iraq proves this point in spades — Bush lacks for nothing when it comes to military power and a desire to win this war, and yet here we are, plunging into the abyss. Sure, he and the rest of his team have been shown to be a bunch of arrogant incompetents, and no doubt there will be plenty of contra-factual history exercises that posit the "what-if" of non-morons doing things differently. And it's clear that things have been made worse, and our options limited, because of that incompetence. But in the end, I put the transformation of Iraq through invasion and occupation in the category of things we could never have done successfully, and should not have tried to do. There are limits to power even for super-powers.

So Iraq is broken beyond repair, and there are no good solutions. Anything we do, in Drum's words, will be "disastrous." This realization needs to be the starting point for a real debate on what we should do, not the false choice of victory or defeat that we are offered by the dreamers. We've already lost, and victory is impossible — so what now?