Waiting For 5,000
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Bush, Democrats, History, Iraq, McCain, Military, Money, Republicans, The War On Terrorism3,232.
3,547.
3,689.
Anybody remember these numbers?
I don’t, and for that I’m a bit ashamed.
But 4,000, well, that one seems to give us pause. For some reason the sight of three zeroes makes us turn our necks long enough to pay attention, ask more questions and continue to find few real answers.
So here’s my question on the anniversary of this 4th set of three zeroes: Was it worth it?
And more broadly, how has the Bush administration demonstrated that this war has:
- been worth the cost in lives,
- been worth diverting attention and resources away from domestic issues,
- been worth diverting our attention away from other foreign policy issues,
- and made us any safer?
The only tangible benefits seem to be that a bad dictator is gone and people have been freed. Fair enough. These are good things.
But Saddam was a bad guy who had no ties to al Qaeda. And, forgive me for being cruel, but it’s not up to us to make sure the entire world is free. If that were the case, we would have started with Darfur, not Iraq.
Here are some sobering facts for Iraq right now. 25 soldiers died in the last two weeks. There’s news that the Iraqis we’ve hired to fight al Qaeda haven’t been paid yet and are dangerously close to quitting. Violence across the country claimed the lives of 58 citizens over the weekend. But the worst news? The breathing room our troops gave the Iraqi government via the surge strategy is being wasted.
Another fact that seems to get missed in all these discussions…our intelligence estimates say that al Qaeda is stronger than ever before.
This is why more and more Americans don’t accept the premise that if we stay there things are going to get fixed and if we leave everything is going to go south. What we’re all starting to collectively realize is that the longer we’re in Iraq, the more chances there are for things to go wrong both there AND here. And what a continued presence in Iraq will most likely result in is we’ll have less say in how we’ll ultimately exit the country. Because we will exit at some point. We all know this. The only way we can control our own destiny here is to set realistic timetables and stick to them.
And yes, al Qaeda will claim victory, but I say let them think they’ve defeated us. Let them believe we’re tucking our tail between our legs. Let them put out their inane little videos. People, just because they say it doesn’t make it true.
Does anybody think if we pull out of Iraq that we’re going to stop tracking down al Qaeda heavies? Does anybody believe the broader fight against the Islamic extremists is going to stop? In fact, now we can start this shadow war in earnest and allocate our vast resources to that fight instead of continuing to throw billions down a hole in Iraq. Can you imagine how many top al Qaeda we could have captured by now using those resources that lay at the bottom of that hole?
Also, is it just me or have we forgotten that we won the war against Saddam and Iraq? Seriously, it was won. Saddam was defeated. We just haven’t been able to secure peace. The difference between those two things is very significant, and I think most of us are accepting the reality that there’s no way we’ll be able to stem the insurgent violence completely. So the fact that Bush and McCain continue to say that withdrawal means “defeat” just shows you how ass backwards our current foreign policy reasoning has become. Again, we all know we have to get out of Iraq at some point, so who’s truly setting us up to fail, the “Defeatocrats” or the “Republican’ts”?
It’s time to go. The sooner the better. Otherwise, we’ll be meeting back here in about a year and talking about the lives that were forever changed between now and 5,000.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 and is filed under Bush, Democrats, History, Iraq, McCain, Military, Money, Republicans, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 24th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
first of all, 4000 soldiers have not died in Iraq. Only about 20% of that number have died. The rest were murdered by terrorists. If you depict this conflict as a bunch of dupes being sent into quicksand - literally, quicksand (like an act of nature) - then of course its not going to be worth it.
This tendency to completely ignore the ideology of a bloodthirsty enemy, many of whom have crossed international borders into a country they have no business being in, simply to kill Americans, is a symptom of westerner’s steryotypes of middle easterners, lumping them all in together as one angry mob, who do not have free will and cannot make moral decisions about metering out violence. Therefore, the deaths are all George and Dick’s fault because Arabs are like insects and simply cannot be held morally responsible for what they do.
They are attacking us in Iraq! Otherwise, they were there to before we invaded which would make the war justified anyway.
The failures of the Bush administration in conducting this war do not justify withdrawal or make the war unjustified to begin with. They are reasons to correct the problem and fight harder. It took 3 years before they figured it out but apparently they finally got their acts together.
What do we get out of this? Islamic terrorists have experienced a quagmire 10 times what U.S. forces have gone through. We get a nation of 25 million people who now use their government powers to persecute terrorists in the heart of the Arab world rather than support them. This is why it is all worth it in the end.
We may be somewhat burdened by our successes because winning a crucial battle against terrorism only makes things quieter here at home. There will be not signing of unconditional surrender on the deck of a battleship. There will be coordination amongst former terrorist regimes such as Afghanistan and Iraq to rid themselves of Islamic terrorists in the future, so we don’t have to. That means significantly reducing the chances of more 9/11’s. Thats all we can really ask for. They will only have died in vain if we give up now.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
JG
Well said!
Jimmy-
How come I can’t seem to agree with anything you comment on? Were you ever in the military - because it doesn’t sound like you have a firm grasp of the situation from the “grunts” point of view. And what’s up with your grasp of logic……..? To say that terrorists have no business in Iraq but we do is just ridiculous.
Bush lied and knowingly committed the USA on a destructive war in the middle of Arabia - there isn’t a person alive that can dispute that fact - so why do you?
To make a blanket statement that the majority of US deaths in Iraq are attributable to terrorists is patently wrong. We don’t know who is killing US troops, certainly some are terrorists - certainly some are Iraqi’s involved in an insurgency of an enemy that invaded their country - certainly some of them are opportunists and criminals making the best of a bad situation - and certainly some of them are “contracted” security people. The US has lost over 4000 soldiers but the Iraqi’s have lost 200 times that number - for what?
The insanity comes from the Bush administrations ever changing goals in Iraq, the inconsistent rationale for being there and the complete misapplication of the US Army and Marine Corps. Whenever you send a bunch of well trained, armed 20 year old American men (and women to a small degree) into a foreign country you are going to have problems……(feel free to substitute American with any nationality in that last sentence…..within reason of course Fiji or New Guinea don’t count). The Bush administration essentially used an Elephant gun to kill a fly…….sending the military after criminals is simply stupid. Criminals and terrorism are defeated with superior police work, sound alliances, tight borders, and strict banking laws - not army’s and navy’s.
Bush is a clown, he’s always been a clown, and as far as clowns go he’ll go down as one of the worst in history (”he wasn’t even a good clown” on his tombstone). The longer the USA stays in Iraq to fight clowns war, the greater we rush towards bankruptcy as a nation (it’s a real possibility since our debt climbed to more than 69% of GDP in 2007 - and it’s still climbing as GDP shrinks). So wake up Jimmy - you were lied to, your tax dollars were stolen, your soldiers were sent off to die for corporate America, not anything that will improve the day to day lives of you and I. Clowns war was a distraction as billions and billions of dollars were robbed from the tax payers. So while we screamed about a war and the injustice of it all - corporate America took us to the cleaners once again and not one of our elected leaders lifted a finger to stop it. Are you proud of that?
March 24th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Jimmy, your world view and subsequent foreign policy strategy would have us unthroning every two bit despot from here to timbuktu who may be involved with terrorism. Meanwhile, you’re ignoring the worsening economic situation at home.
It’s time to reconsider some things.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Wew, finally some recent bad news coming out of Iraq. That was a dry spell. Alright, rev up the engines –
March 24th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Approximately 20% of those casualties died in training or transportation accidents, or other non-combat deaths typical of military service, even during peacetime. Thats what I meant.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I recently learned that one of my cousins, who is in Minnesota’s National Guard, is scheduled to be sent to Iraq in September. What raised my eyebrow is that his unit’s tour of duty there is scheduled to last only nine months, instead of the usual fifteen. As far as I know he hasn’t been given any explanation for this. Might this mean a troop reduction is already in the works?
March 24th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Not so much a troop reduction as it is making sure they don’t wear soldiers out. And that’s certainly a good thing any way you look at it.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Sure, but the result is the same. And it’s war time. So they’re casualties of war.
Dos…that’s fair. But as a libertarian, it surprises me to see you’re so eager to spend hundreds of billions we don’t have on a clearly faulty foreign policy strategy, while at the same time bemoaning the possibility of a Dem getting the White House because you only think it’ll cost you more money. Do you not see the inherent contradiction between those two things? Just because the money is going to the military, doesn’t mean it’s well spent. At least with government subsidized healthcare you’d actually get some measurable ROI.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Wow, well put.
March 25th, 2008 at 6:34 am
On the other hand, Justin, you’re making an assumption too. It’s an assumption that we’ll have fewer casualties under a Democratic administration, yet I don’t see evidence that this is necessarily true.
Both Dem candidates say they’ll end the Iraq War ASAP, so in the short term there it’s likely that we’d have fewer soldiers die in Iraq. But both have said that they’d redeploy if the situation deteriorates- which probably carries a higher risk than staying and defending the gains we’ve already made.
And then there’s the question of other deployments/incursions. Since Clinton is running largely on her husband’s record, and many people assume she’ll make similar decisions, should we assume that she’d send troops to various conflicts as frequently as Bill did? Because during his administration, though that was supposed to be a time of peace, we lost just as many troops as we now have in Iraq (just over 4000 troop deaths.)
All I’m trying to say is that your own assumptions aren’t necessarily true either. There’s also the concern that if we take a less aggressive tack on foreign policy, that it could lead to more domestic attacks or attacks on international bases/embassies, which would lead to civilian deaths. It’s not a zero sum game, where a withdrawal from Iraq means fewer Americans die.
March 25th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Christine, did I mention the election in any of this? I merely said that the way the Republicans are couching it means any pull out results in failure. Frankly, I don’t care who pulls us out, just so long as it happens. No assumptions there, but the reality is that only the Dems have been proposing this.
To the point of going BACK into Iraq, well, they only said that if al Qaeda had established bases there, meaning public ties to the Iraqi government, as was the case in Afghanistan pre 9/11. They wouldn’t invade again if al Qaeda was IN Iraq, because al Qaeda is IN nearly every single country in the world.
That’s an interesting “fact” about the 4,000 troops deaths with Clinton, but when you make claims like that, please link them. However, to counter that, did tens of thousands of soldiers also have legs, arms, feet, hands and other assorted body parts blown off? Tens of thousands more get PTSD? Comparing 8 years of Bush and Clinton hardly seems apt.
Let’s talk about your own assumptions here for a moment…who said anything about a Dem’s foreign policy being less aggressive? The simple fact of the matter is it may be more aggressive, just not publicly sabre rattling as Bush’s. Read this piece to demonstrate how aggressiveness needn’t come in the form of invading countries.
And while you’re right, in theory, that a withdrawal from Iraq doesn’t mean that fewer Americans die, the immediate effect is that fewer soldiers will be dying. Also, tracing any future terrorist attack back to a withdrawal decision will be torturous at best. I’m sure you and your friends would try to do it if it happens, but the current track record on the right-wing for tracing things back isn’t so good right now so forgive me if I’m not too worried that pulling out or Iraq will result mostly in one thing: our soldiers coming home.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Justin — I just want cheaper gas. We leave Iraq and you are looking at a hole lot of financial pain for folks back here the U.S.. Please explain to Mr. & Mrs. Smith way they are paying $4-$6 at the station. What kind of effect to you think that is going to have on the economy? If you can figure out a way to stablize oil production out of Iraq upon our withdrawal, I’m all for it.
March 25th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Justin, my sole purpose was to point out that we all make assumptions when we choose which candidate to support. Obviously no one knows the future, we only know the facts about past and present and we each use our brains to extrapolate from there. I wasn’t making any claim that I’m clairvoyant and thus avoid making assumptions, I was saying that each of us does this, by necessity.
I think your point about total casualties, rather than just deaths, is a very valid one that I will concede (though I don’t know the answer to how many there were under Clinton, I strongly doubt there would be any parity.)
March 25th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
The reason the price of gas is going up is not because our consumption of Iraq’s oil is going down. Remember, we didn’t get ANY oil from them pre 1993, and we were doing just fine before then.
What’s driving gas up is two things: the value of our falling dollar and OPEC’s control over the production, which sets the value of a barrel of crude, which is priced in our dollars. This is why Saudia Arabia wanted to untie the value of crude from the dollar. Because they know if the value of our dollar continues to drop, a barrel of crude will have to continue to rise, and the psychological effect alone may have some countries turning to alternative fuels.
So, given those two factors, how about if we make moves to increase the value of the dollar instead?
One of the first and easiest ways to do this is stop borrowing hundreds of billions to execute on a disastrous foreign policy. Because the less money we borrow, the less we go into debt and less money we have to print to pay off that debt. At that point our currency may begin to start getting some parity with other countries and the price of a barrel will decrease.
March 25th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Christine, while I appreciate the clarification, I have to express that it’s frustrating to see you continue to inject these secondary arguments into our conversations that divert from the main point. I mean, isn’t the idea that people make assumptions pretty obvious? Not only that, as I demonstrated, you made an assumption for me (even more frustrating).
Getting back to my point…it was about the framing of the argument by the Republicans, where anything but a vague definition of what “victory” is would result in a “loss.” I made a point to say that we’ve already “won” the war, we just haven’t been able to secure the peace. Therefore, I think it’s irresponsible for Bush and McCain to continue to couch Iraq in such a way that it becomes a win/loss situation, when really it’s just a matter of differing foreign policy ideologies.
You see my point here, right? To them, there’s only ONE solution, and that’s “victory.” What’s victory? Well, they don’t know yet, but they’ll tell us when they know. Pretty intellectually shaky ground if you ask me, and they put America in a vulnerable situation either way.
By the way, where did you get the 4,000 Clinton number? I know you’re conceding the point, but I’d like to know what your source was nonetheless.
March 25th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
By the way, is it Christin or Christine? I think I saw Michael call you Christine once and I assumed he knew.
March 25th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
It’s still the war, stupid. …
Two grim milestones over the last week - a five year anniversary and 4,000 American lives. Over the last week I have been reading through a variety of posts, articles and essays marking the anniversary and analyzing how we got here. Since 70% of Americ…
March 25th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Gas will continue to go up in price. The USA invented the Petroleum industry, and led the world for decades in barrels pumped and barrels exported - the worlds supply is priced in a quickly devaluing currency. We are still the 3rd or 4th largest producer in the world - but consumption keeps increasing globally so there will be no price decrease = probably ever. DOS - you can help to use less — walk, ride your bike, vacation locally, take the train, buy a Prius, install solar panels in your home, start a vegetable garden, don’t eat red meat, never vote for a Clinton, bring our troops home, don’t waste electricity, do your own yard work, write your congressional representative regularly and tell them to support energy conservation efforts and alternative energy programs.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:53 am
Monthly civilian and security force deaths in Iraq, per icasualties.org:
Jan-07 1,802
Feb-07 3,014
Mar-07 2,977
Apr-07 1,821
May-07 1,980
Jun-07 1,345
Jul-07 1,690
Aug-07 1,674
Sep-07 848
Oct-07 679
Nov-07 560
Dec-07 548
Jan-08 554
Feb-08 674
Average coalition deaths (excludes Iraqi security) per day, Jan 07 - Feb 08:
Jan-07 2.77
Feb-07 3.04
Mar-07 2.65
Apr-07 3.9
May-07 4.23
Jun-07 3.6
Jul-07 2.81
Aug-07 2.84
Sep-07 2.3
Oct-07 1.29
Nov-07 1.33
Dec-07 0.77
Jan-08 1.29
Feb-08 1.03
Look - I agree that the war wasn’t worth it. It was a major screwup. But things have gotten SO much better in the last 6 months, and I don’t think pulling out right now makes much sense. Certainly it makes sense to come up with a plan to stabilize Iraq then and get out, but the goal should be success. After so much investment, I’d hate to see it fall apart.
March 26th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Justin,
It’s Christine (christin is part of an e-mail address that was automatically assigned to me, and I couldn’t be bothered to change it although I’ve come to think I would have been better off since a lot of people seem to assume that’s my first name.)
On the assumption thing, you were the one who brought that up, here:
I was only pointing out that Dos makes assumptions just as every one of us does- that’s the basis of every political position that each of us makes.
I’m not sure why my tangential comments are considered less relevant or valid than anyone else’s. It seems more like a case of you not agreeing with me, which is fine, but do you really want to suggest that I shouldn’t take the conversation in different directions? If so, will you also make sure every other commenter stays very specifically on point of the original post? Will your own comments do that as well? I kind of thought that one of the great things about moderate blogs is that all reasonable viewpoints were welcomed- even those that make tangential points in order to suggest that people look at an issue from a different perspective. But it’s your blog, so if you feel I’m violating a precept that you hold, you can tell me to get lost if you’d like.
As for the troop death numbers, it’s something I’ve seen quoted multiple times so I had to track down sources as you’ve challenged me. Here’s one blog that cited it:
http://mpinkeyes.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/military-casualties-during-the-bill-clinton-administration/
and when I look harder for a primary source of the stats, I found this:
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_more_soldiers_die_during_bill_clintons.html
which debunks a false accounting of troop deaths under Clinton but provides actual numbers which are higher than what I quoted (total of 7500 during his eight years in office.) They also though give some background info which would support your side of the argument- that many or most of those deaths were routine and noncombat related. And as I’ve already conceded, I do think it’s relevant that you pointed out casualties include serious, permanent injuries, not just deaths (in fact part of the reason our death toll is low is that more casualties are saved by medical advances than they were during Viet Nam.) Even still, the point remains that the death toll AND total casualty rate of the Iraq War to date is far less than Viet Nam. That doesn’t diminish it, because every death and disabled veteran is very significant, but perspective also matters.
And the monthly trends that TomfromMD provides are also relevant, IMO.
March 26th, 2008 at 7:45 am
2 very different wars Christine - comparative counts aren’t representative, or important. As of this morning the 6 month old cease-fire between the Mahdi army of Mugtada Sadr and al Maliki’s government seems to be on the verge of falling apart. That cease fire is the only thing holding it all together - if it goes…….
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq27mar27,1,3324261.story
March 26th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Christine, you said…
Taking the conversation in a different direction is certainly not off limits, but the manner in which you do it seems to be designed to make all arguments have equal value and thus stop the debate, and that’s not where I take issue. Just because somebody states their opinion doesn’t make it more relevant or true. If that’s what you consider moderate, that’s fine, but I don’t. Obviously, though, this blog welcomes all viewpoints, regardless of their logical efficacy. :-)
To provide an example of why this is frustrating, let’s again take a look at this latest debate. The idea that most of what we say are “assumptions” seeks to marginalize any debate because everything we say is supposedly based on things that we can’t know. So to me, the supposition there is that since none of us can predict the future, everything we say is virtually meaningless. I know this isn’t what you said, and my guess is that you’d position it as “because of assumptions all these arguments have equal value,” but the net outcome of your argument is that it shuts down debate, instead of promoting it.
To your other point on perspective, sure, it matters, but only for somebody who is trying to marginalize the impact of these deaths during the war as a valid point of debate and reason for withdrawal. And I’m sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say on one hand “That doesn’t diminish…” and then call for us to put total Iraq deaths into a perspective that compares them to total Vietnam deaths. Those two viewpoints are opposed to one another, and this is especially frustrating because I never even brought up Vietnam in the first place (just like I never made an assumption). If I had said something to the effect of “Iraq is just as bad as Vietnam”, and you were saying, “Hey, let’s put this in perspective,” I would understand. But I didn’t and so…frustration.
Your tone is certainly welcome Christine, and do know I appreciate it, but the manner of debate you’re promoting isn’t necessarily something I look forward to engaging on a daily basis.
Thanks for your response.