The Iraq War Enablers

By Bob Herbert

So there was Hillary Rodham Clinton grandstanding for
the television cameras last week, giving Donald
Rumsfeld a carefully scripted chewing out for his role
in the Bush administration’s lunatic war in Iraq.

Casual viewers could have been forgiven for not
realizing that Senator Clinton has long been a
supporter of this war, and that even now, with the
number of pointless American deaths moving toward
2,600, her primary goal apparently is not to find an
end game, but to figure out the most expedient
political position to adopt - the one that will do the
least damage to her presidential ambitions.

Mrs. Clinton is trying to have it both ways. A couple
of months ago, she told a gathering in Washington: "I
do not think it is a smart strategy either for the
president to continue with his open-ended commitment,
which I think does not put enough pressure on the new
Iraqi government." She then added, ’Nor do I think it
is smart strategy to set a date certain."

Slick Willie has morphed into Slick Hilly, as the
carnival of death in Iraq goes on.

Mrs. Clinton is just one of the many supporters of the
war who should have known better from the beginning,
and who are now (with the wheels falling off the Iraqi
cart and public support for the war plummeting) engaged
in the tricky ritual of rationalization.

The favored "it’s not my fault" explanation is that the
war was always a grand idea, but the Bush gang was so
dopey it fouled up a good thing. If only they’d sent in
more troops. If only they hadn’t disbanded Saddam’s
army. If only they’d turned right instead of left, or
left instead of right, Iraq would be an oil-rich, free-
market, democratic paradise, even as we speak.

I’m not trying to give a pass to Mr. Rumsfeld,
President Bush, Dick Cheney or any of the rest of the
war-loving, high-strutting, muscle-flexing men and
women in this most dreadful of administrations. These
are the individuals who drove us into the flames of
Iraq that so far have consumed scores of thousands of
lives. But they could have - and should have - been
stopped by wiser heads.

This was a war that never should have happened. There
was a legitimate war for the United States to fight in
Afghanistan, but that was not enough for the
administration. The Bush gang wanted a war with Iraq,
and less-than-courageous politicians like Mrs. Clinton
and many others lined up as enablers to help make that
war happen.

Many of the Democrats in Congress supported the war
only because they remembered the price paid by party
members who stood against the first gulf war, a stand
that became an embarrassment when the war was easily
won and was therefore popular.

Despite the rationalizations now suddenly on the lips
of so many, the problem with the current war in Iraq is
not the way it was conducted, but the fact of the war
itself. It was launched amid blinding, billowing clouds
of deceit. There was never any legitimate reason for
the war. Iraq had not attacked the U.S. and there was
no imminent threat of attack.

The U.S. went in with guns blazing ("shock and awe")
like Matt Dillon shooting up the dusty streets of Dodge
City. Only this was the real world, and the result has
been unending tragedy.

The American occupation of Iraq was guaranteed, sooner
or later, to provoke a sustained and bloody resistance,
and it was inevitable that terror would be the
resistance’s most effective tool. It was also certain
that if the Shiites were empowered, there would be
widespread retaliation for their many years of
suffering under Saddam, and then the inevitable
counterreaction of the suddenly disempowered Sunnis,
and so on.

None of this was a secret. The warnings came from
around the world before the first shot was ever fired.

Mrs. Clinton, other Democrats and whatever sensible
Republicans may still be out there should be getting
together to work out a plan for an orderly withdrawal
of American forces from Iraq. This was not a war we
were ever going to win. It’s time we brought our
involvement to an end.

Americans no longer support this war, and there are few
things more empty of meaning than dying in a war that
one’s fellow citizens - safe at home - have already
given up on.

We went into Iraq with bombs falling and guns blazing,
insisting all the while that we were bringing the
Iraqis the gifts of freedom and democracy. Instead, we
gave them terror, chaos and civil war - in other words,
a whole new generation of misery and mass death.

Shock and awe, indeed.

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/opinion/07herbert.html