By Andrew L. Jaffee

William F. Buckley Jr., writing for the National Review, explains why Americans are tiring of the Iraq effort: they’re sick of inept U.S. policy, and disgusted with how Iraqis have treated the gift of Saddam’s removal:

… Americans feel that the Iraqis’ sacrifice is disproportionately low, and the single reason for this is that it is also Iraqis who are causing the tribulation in which American soldiers are being wounded and killed. And there is no strategic plan, issuing from the White House, that apportions the sacrifice being made to goals being accomplished. …

Take yesterday’s chlorine gas attack, wrought by Iraqis against Iraqis. This is building a future without Saddam? To such savage attacks, we now have Bush’s troop surge, about 3 years too late — though I’m still willing to give it a chance (what choice do we have?).

I supported the Iraq war effort from the start, believing we could start something magical — democratic — in the Arab world. In retrospect, I now see that many critiques of Bush’s war strategy are valid. At the same time, those policy failures do not exonerate Iraqis from blowing a one-in-a-million opportunity to move from Saddam’s Stone Age into an age of peace and prosperity.

The Bush camp could’ve waited a little longer (e.g., until Afghanistan was more stable) before invading Iraq, they should’ve gone in with many more troops, they should’ve smashed all insurgent strongholds the way they handled Fallujah attempt #2, etc. Yet Iraqis were rid of Saddam; were allowed to participate in free elections; were helped to establish a sovereign parliament, independent judiciary, and now appreciating currency, etc., etc. So what does 2 wrongs, or 2 half rights, add up to? Which leads me right back to Buckley’s analysis:

… There are many voters who do not want simply to drop the curtain on Iraq. But the number displaying acquiescence, let alone enthusiasm, for more of the same is approaching zero. …

I think there is a sense in the land that the Iraqi people are not doing their part. It’s true that Mr. al-Maliki has several times insisted on sharing the security burden more rigorously. And it is true that the Iraqi people are suffering mortally. The people who get killed every day by those insurgents are here and there an American soldier, an average of three per day. Mostly, though, the people who are getting killed are Iraqis. An estimated 1.8 million Iraqis have left their homes and fled the country, exiled by the war. One cannot count that less than a major sacrifice.

Yet Americans feel that the Iraqis’ sacrifice is disproportionately low, and the single reason for this is that it is also Iraqis who are causing the tribulation in which American soldiers are being wounded and killed. And there is no strategic plan, issuing from the White House, that apportions the sacrifice being made to goals being accomplished. There is no sense of the sun rising every day on freshly liberated soil.

The American voter has therefore no strategic expectation of finality, and it is because of this that congressional dissidents are having so much success in waving before the voters individual dates when, through the manipulation of appropriated funds, reduced numbers of Americans would be available to effect whatever it is that the administration intends to effect. …

Is a last-ditch troop surge in Baghdad enough to salvage the future of the entire Iraqi nation? If we didn’t go in even with a plan “A,” what’s plan “B?”

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Related: United States, Iraq

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