Iraq delusions

According to BBC News, declassified US Central Command documents from August 2002 show that the Iraq invasion plan called for a self-governing Iraq by December 2006, with only 5,000 US troops remaining. In hindsight, this is ludicrously unrealistic. Before we act as "armchair quarterback," however, we should ask the question: Could they have known better?

Interestingly, the answer is yes.

According to this article (originally on cnn.com), the US Central Command also sponsored war games in 1999 in an attempt to predict how an invasion might turn out. The results were not encouraging: even in the best case, there was a high likelihood of a failed state. Its conclusions were depressingly similar to the actual events: "fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines," "Iran's anti-Americanism could be enflamed," friction with Arab and allied partners.

We both could and should have known better.

So, how is the invasion turning out? There is a great deal of rhetoric from both sides, but I quote a very conservative source, Representative John Duncan of Tennessee, one of the few Republicans who voted against the invasion. Duncan says the chaos in Iraq is much worse than a civil war. "It is common for 75 to 100 Iraqis to be killed every day. This would be the equivalent of 300,000 to 400,000 deaths a year in the US ... Iraq is a mess we could not straighten out even if we spent our entire federal budget on it." He then quotes columnist David Ignatuis: "Iraq is in many ways an object lesson in the dangers of romanticizing and over-idealizing America's ability to transform other cultures."

Can the "troop surge" proposed by President Bush win the war in Iraq? Doubtful. What is to be done next? Nobody really knows. Our national delusion has cost us $350 billion dollars, thousands of lives, and tragedy on such a massive scale that it is scarcely imaginable.