One of the many delights about working in the Federal City, Washington, D.C., was to read William Raspberry in the Washington Post in the morning and then to read a column by Mary McGrory in the afternoon Washington Star. Mary died last year and we miss her. But Brother Raspberry is still at it.
On January 3rd, in a column in the Post, Raspberry posed several questions in “A Way Out of Iraq.” This small essay offers a few thoughts, an idea or two and some long held views by this old World War II soldier about this subject.
No one ever satisfactorily explained the phrase, “cut to the chase” to me. Perhaps the title of “Cut Our Losses Now” in Iraq may summarize my feelings from the beginning about the disastrous invasion of a sovereign power who posed no threat to this country. If that title and conclusion squares with the cognoscenti who say “cut to the chase,” it must demonstrate that his old essay writer is more up to date than he had thought.
Raspberry’s lead sentence is, “Is it time for America to leave Iraq?” The answer is a thousand times, “YES!” We had no business being there in the first place. As Dick Clarke, who served on Condeleezza’s staff said, it was the WRONG WAR in the WRONG PLACE. It might be added that it was at the WRONG TIME, as well. As the war continues, it becomes clearer every day that Clarke was absolutely right. We have killed a sufficient number of people, Iraqi and American, as well as our allies to satisfy even the most blood-thirsty among all Americans. Our military hospitals have been awash with the amputated arms and legs of our soldiers. Post trauma distress is predicted for thousands of veterans of the war in Iraq. We have absolutely leveled one city after another. In those cities, civilization is dead. It must be assumed that even the most ardent flag waver has had enough by now. But the neo-cons say, send more troops so that we can “Stay the course.” We have done enough damage to satisfy every war monger alive. It is time to take Senator George Aiken’s advice and bail out of there forthwith. Declaring victory would be optional.
Further down in Raspberry’s article is the question, “More than 1300 American troops have died in this war. What would walking away do to their families and to military morale?”
The answer to that question is immediate and eminently clear. As a former soldier, it must be said that the families and military morale will suffer endlessly when it is finally perceived that we have been holding a disastrous losing hand which was dealt by us. Independent observers will tell you we are either no closer to successfully dealing with the Iraqi insurgency or alternatively, that we are falling behind. Virginia, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel leads to more deaths, more amputations, more leveled cities and a deeper quagmire with no hope for the rose petals that we believed the Iraqi people would sprinkle on us as we performed close order drills in the streets of Baghdad. The hand we are holding holds no winners at all. It holds more deaths. The hand we are holding will probably lead to our defeat in Iraq just as it did in Vietnam. In this situation, the only sensible strategy is to cut our losses and to do so as quickly as possible.
Before the invasion, of course, we had no casualties and it must be supposed that military morale was probably at acceptable levels. When the Commander-in-Chief presented himself in his flight suit on the flight deck of the Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln, there were 138 American deaths. You will recall that was in May, 2003 and was punctuated by the sign “Mission Accomplished” in the background.
At that time, there were 138 families mourning the loss of one of their sons or daughters or fathers. We may presume that military morale was fairly high. In the ensuing 19 months, our dead will be at or will exceed the 1380 mark. Mathematics will tell you, that is a 1000% increase. There will soon be 1380 families to grieve and enlistments and re-enlistments in the military services will continue to fall.
“Walking away,” as Raspberry puts it, would mean an end to the grieving and an end to our wounded. And enlistments might pick up.
The question that follows has to be answered as it relates to families and to military morale. When deaths reach 1500 American soldiers, does anyone believe that the families will feel better? When the death toll passes 2000 or 2500 or 3000, does anyone wish to say that families will feel better than they feel today? And will the additional deaths cause an upsurge in military morale? This is what “Staying the Course” means.
Bluntly put, American deaths in Iraq are not noble sacrifices to protect the United States. Far from it. The women and men being killed and wounded in Iraq are sacrifices for political purposes and for oil. No more and no less. The longer the invasion and occupation continue, there will be more deaths and more grieving and more turmoil.
A second blunt fact is that we are viewed as Christian occupiers in an Islamic land. We have 150,000 soldiers in Iraq now. Every additional soldier will simply give the Iraqis another reason to hate us as occupiers. The insurgency will go on and on until we leave Iraq much the way we departed Saigon some years ago. The sooner we leave and cut our losses, the sooner we can enjoy normal relations with Iraq and the Arab countries.
Raspberry then asks a question about what we would say to the Brits and to the other coalition partners who supported our war in Iraq. Would they ever take us seriously again? We propose to leave now because it is in our best interest to do so. To stay only compounds the deaths, the casualties and the damage. Secondly, the allies will learn to avoid foolishly following the leadership of the United States which, as it is now constituted, is devoid of experience with war. Why should we prolong the war simply to avoid the criticism of England and the other allies? We made an unholy mess of things and it is time to cut our losses. Our allies have long since reached that point and are staying with us in reduced and non-combatant roles to insure favorable political treatment in the future.
Next Raspberry asks whether Israel “might doubt our reliability.” Sharon is an advocate of cutting losses as he is withdrawing Israeli settlements from Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli government sent those settlers to Gaza and the West Bank. In the same fashion, we started our war in Iraq. Sharon is saying Israel must cut its losses now. Bush copies Sharon in other situations, but in this case, somehow, we haven’t gotten the message. Sharon made a regrettable decision that belatedly, he is trying to correct. We need to do the same.
In the final analysis, in 1920, the English cobbled together a country of disparate parts which Saddam Hussein eventually inherited. The differences between these disparate parts are enormous. No one ever suggested that the Kurds for example, would feel welcome in Baghdad or Basra. The Sunnis and the Shias have no love for each other even though they are both Arabs and Muslims. When we walk away, if the current administration ever becomes truthful, it is almost inevitable that a civil war will take place. We need to be out of Iraq before that war takes place.
Will the Iraqis who have worked with us be crucified when we leave? Most likely, that may happen. We made a monstrous mistake by invading Iraq and some innocent Iraqis will pay for our grievous error. That always happens in war. But staying the course is simply a euphemism for doing nothing other than continuing the conflict for many years.
If the United States were ever to find itself under occupation by Arabs, we would consider our American insurgents as heroes and martyrs. Why is it so difficult for the Bush administration to understand that basic fact of life in a wartime setting?
Regardless of who it hurts and any embarrassment that may follow, our only course of action is to cut our losses and leave Iraq now. Prolonging it for new elections or for an effective Iraqi police force to take over is nothing more than blowing in the wind. While we wait for these myths of fantasy to take place, we will find our casualties growing. There will be more families to weep and military morale will continue to sink. Are 3000 or 5000 or 9000 American dead better than the 1350 we have now?
The answer is obvious. We have to cut our losses now before more self inflicted pain is visited upon the American and Iraqi public. Get out now before we kill ourselves and try to do better in the future. That is the practical response to William Raspberry’s thought about “A Way Out of Iraq.”
E. E. CARR
January 7, 2005
 
ATTACHMENT
The Washington Post
A Way Out of Iraq By William Raspberry
Monday, January 3, 2005; Page A13

Is it time for America to leave Iraq?
It’s not a rhetorical question, but one that goes deeply into our notions of who we are and how we wish to be seen — militarily, diplomatically, politically and morally.
I wrote recently (and disapprovingly) of the views of Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, who thought America’s problem in Iraq is too much squeamishness — a moral cowardice that prevents us from going after insurgents and the Iraqis (including family members) who give them sanctuary.
One sentence from that column contained this thought of mine:
“Even those of us who thought President Bush made a hideous moral and military blunder in launching the war are largely sympathetic to the way he is conducting the aftermath — not because it is particularly successful but because we can’t think of anything better.”
Well, a number of people surveying the wreckage of our Iraq policy think the better option is simply to leave.
One of the more articulate expressions of that view is an article by Naomi Klein in the Jan. 10 issue of the Nation magazine. Her point of departure is the so-called Pottery Barn rule invoked by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his prewar advice to President Bush: “You break it, you own it.”
Klein acknowledges that we’ve broken Iraq, but she argues that our continued presence there doesn’t fix anything and only makes it worse. We don’t need to “own” the country, she says, only acknowledge the breakage, pay for it and leave.
Just leave. It sounds so simple — so evocative of the advice Vermont Sen. George Aiken offered another president presiding over a quagmire called Vietnam: Just declare victory and go home.
Why not now? Politically, it would require a concession — confession? — that the whole thing was a mistake. President Bush seems incapable of reaching or articulating such a conclusion — unless forced to do so by a public outcry reminiscent of the Vietnam era and a diminishing ability to attract young people into the armed forces. More than 1,300 American troops have died in this war. What would walking away do to their families and to military morale?
What would we say to the British, the Australians and the others in the coalition who have suffered political damage and lost lives in support of our war? What friend or foe could ever again take seriously an American commitment? Even Israel might start to doubt our reliability.
What of the moral considerations? Our walking away, with or without a declaration of victory, would be a death sentence to those Iraqis who worked with us in furtherance of our announced mission to deliver democracy to Iraq.
And what, finally, of the “you break it, you own it” imperative (which Pottery Barn says is not its policy)?
We can argue all day that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant whose defeat and humiliation should evoke no sympathy from us. But he did have a functioning country. There was a government in place. People went to work and to the market and to school in relative safety. Can anyone really believe that the U.S.-spawned anarchy has left the Iraqi people better off? We broke it. Do we have the moral right to walk away with the shards scattered across the floor?
Do these rejoinders demolish the argument for just leaving?
Klein doesn’t think so. Our continuing presence, she argues, is a magnet for violence against the Iraqis, and our plans for elections seem calculated to spark “the civil war needed to justify an ongoing presence for US troops.”
Our “staying the course” doesn’t begin to fix what we broke, but rather continues the breakage.
Is it time for us to walk away?
A surprising number of readers of this column think it is. And two have independently come up with a pretext for doing so right away. Walter Gordon in Delaware and Christina Warren in California both argue for sending either all or a substantial portion of our Iraq-based troops and resources to the tsunami-devastated region around the Indian Ocean.
It would get us out of Iraq and, given that the stricken area is largely Muslim, might go a long way toward defeating the notion that we are anti-Islam.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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“Cognoscenti” is an incredible word, with which I was preivously unfamiliar. Honestly Pop uses words that I don’t know all the time and I’m always glad when it happens, because it means in a small way that I’ve still got more to learn from him.
I love that the head of the Rand institute conflates “a moral cowardice” with “a war crime.” Trump agrees though, that going after innocent family members is the way to go about things. I can’t see that backfiring at ALL.
And yeah, if we’re going to be utilitarian about feelings in morale (ignoring the inherent contradiction there), the grief felt by the family of thousands of extra dead soldiers outweighs the grief of the families who would feel that the death was pointless in the event of a retreat. So that makes it a bad argument on several levels, I feel.