'Patriotic Grace' in Support of War Is No Virtue

How amazing it is to hear how some people still talk about the U.S. occupation of Iraq at this late date. You’d think even the most naive nationalist would have long ago realized that something is terribly wrong — intrinsically so — with the U.S. “mission” and that calls for “hanging in there” are preposterous. When will the war boosters learn that no one — not even the U.S. government — can manage or reform a society (using that word rather loosely in the case of the ersatz country called Iraq)?

And we still hear those calls, one of the latest coming in late August from Wall Street Journal columnist and Reagan hagiographer Peggy Noonan.

Here’s some of what this cloying writer said, with some commentary thrown in:

What’s needed is not unity but debate at the bedrock level. Is war outside the narrow category of defense ever in the interest of the general public?

Measuring “success”

Noonan says “the surge has gained some ground,” but this is highly contentious. Shortly after Noonan’s column appeared, the news services reported that violence outside of Baghdad was up 20 percent over the previous month. Since the troop “surge” is concentrated in Baghdad, where violence has diminished, it’s clear that U.S. policy is simply shifting, not reducing, the so-called insurgency.

Moreover, we should remember that the additional troops President Bush sent to Iraq in the summer were supposed to help the struggling government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to achieve 18 political “benchmarks” set by the U.S. government. But reports from the administration and the Congress have documented that little or no progress has been made in that regard.

In other words, reports of the success of the latest operation are grossly exaggerated. This was driven home after two so-called harsh critics of the Bush policy, Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, declared in a New York Times op-ed that progress was being made in Iraq and that Congress should give the president more time to succeed. This optimistic account was immediately demolished by critics who pointed out that Pollack and O’Hanlon were never critics of Bush’s war and that their assessment came after a tour of Iraq that was carefully guided by the U.S. military. O’Hanlon admitted as much in an interview with Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com.

Although Noonan is hoping for “bipartisan forbearance,” she can’t help but concede that in some ways things don’t look good.

Noonan might have gone in a different direction with her quick allusion to the history of Iraq. This is a country that was pasted together from former Ottoman districts by the British imperialists after World War I. It took the iron hand of Saddam Hussein (and his predecessors) to hold the disparate parts together. It was entirely predictable that the U.S. overthrow of Saddam would unleash centrifugal forces. So why did Noonan support the invasion and why does she continue to support the occupation, hoping for a U.S. success? Because it’s the United States and it is only right that the United States — a “great power” — succeed.

The anti-war movement

She does ask the pro-war crowd to treat their opponents nicer, and for that I’ll give her credit.