Rendered to the Orthodoxy
Okay, but tell me this much: do I have to agree that we’ve been defeated in Iraq? I mean, is there a penalty for my obtuseness and for that of the others who don’t want to submit to the orthodoxy? Maybe.
Maybe the penalty is to not be taken seriously. But why would any American not take our achievements in Iraq seriously?
Our military overthrew and captured Saddam Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad. And now his own people —by virtue of a judicial system rooted in a democratically-elected government that we made possible— have tried, convicted, and sentenced the Butcher of Baghdad to death. The Iraqi people braved everything to create such a government! Why isn’t that a serious accomplishment that bears serious consequences for the Arab world as a whole and History itself? How is that a defeat? In a definitive way, America demonstrated through the War for Iraq that it will hold Muslim autocracies responsible for the shit they stir. Moreover, our military and this Administration stood —and stands— for the triumph of democratic values.
But our fighting men and women get no credit for what they have done to liberate the Iraqi people because Iraq is not what we would have it be? That’s absurd and here’s why: because when great wars end on the battlefield, they don’t always end on the streets.
But they do eventually. When Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, it took many years before the violence the Civil War had spawned was finally stilled. There was retaliation in a great many places for a lot longer than we would like to remember now. But, soon enough, the societies that went to war against each other began to heal. Even so, one of the Civil War’s great purposes wasn’t even realized for another century —the liberation of black America.
Do we say now that the American Civil War was a defeat? Be serious! It was, except for the Revolution itself, the greatest triumph of American Civilization. And I say that as a Southerner whose ancestors were destroyed by that war. And, now, I can say for sure that I wouldn’t want to live in an America or a Texas that hadn’t been shaped by those forces —and by that destruction. Something very bad in our character had to be burnt out —and was. I accept that because I have no choice. Not because I wouldn’t make the right choice to be done with slavery, but because History demanded that America be free. I’m an American. I believe in what it is we do to make the world free.
Iraq, too, must pay for its freedom. We didn’t annihilate their society like others we have done. Think we should have? Okay. But because we didn’t firebomb their cities, we gave more people a choice to have a new Iraq. If too many of the wrong people are still around to have a say, then maybe they will have to commit even more violence against each other themselves. They will have to make sacrifices in that way —through civil war— until they are done making them. Then, they will have something that they will have earned. But just as we can’t literally force democracy on a people at the point of a gun, we can’t instantaneously endow them with the desire for peace. They will have to come to that on their knees.
So fuck you if you think America’s been defeated in Iraq. We will never be defeated there. Our best and bravest have made possible a new Iraq —and, ultimately, a new Muslim world— that will owe everything to their sacrifice. The problem you might have with seeing that now is an individual’s problem and, thus, unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
