Telling It Like It Is

Once again, I offer you an outstanding editorial by Sam Hurst:

Sam Hurst: We've lost war in Iraq
By Sam Hurst, Journal columnist
We have lost the war for Iraq. Say it out loud. Roll it around on your tongue. It tastes bitter. Curse me for saying it out loud. We have lost. Now it's all about the taste of bile in the back of our throat.
Our goals are re-shaped every day to fit the failures of the week. Our strategy has been reduced to cliches and tough-talking platitudes. "Stay the course." "Don't cut and run."
The war is in its fourth year. We have lost over 2,600 soldiers. Our soldiers fight an insurgency they cannot see, cannot describe, cannot defeat. All they can do is grudgingly admit that it is getting bigger.
And now there is a sectarian civil war. Last month 3,500 Iraqi civilians died in the violence, the largest monthly death toll of the war. Our glib, simplistic crusade for democracy has given birth instead to religious death squads, terrorist cults and increased influence for Iran in the region.
We have failed to restore the economy, rebuild the nation's infrastructure, or stabilize the oil fields, although we have succeeded in lining the pockets of American contractors. Last, but of most consequence, we are utterly incapable of controlling events on the ground.
This, my fellow citizens, is a quagmire of epic proportions, a quagmire of Vietnam proportions.
We know we have lost this war. But as soon as the first Democrat gloats, as soon as the first Republican waves the flag, the fight starts. We Americans simply hate to lose. We would rather wrack up another $80 billion in deficits, lose another thousand soldiers and destroy the last vestiges of our credibility in the Arab world than face our failure.
We have been here before. Vietnam. Spring 1968. Republicans would do well to study what happened to the Democratic Party in 1968. It was torn apart. If Lyndon Johnson had come clean, Hubert Humphrey would not have had to run as a war president. Richard Nixon would not have been able to position himself as the peace candidate. History would have turned out so differently.
More than the loss of Congress awaits the GOP in '08 if they cannot rein Bush in. 1968 was the beginning of the end for liberal Democrats. That was 40 years ago.
I know that failure is hard to choke down. But the unique character of American democracy offers us a way to think about the problem that might help.
At the end of the Vietnam War I had the opportunity to interview North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho. He and Henry Kissinger shared the Nobel Prize for Peace for negotiating the 1972 Paris Accords. I asked him why he was not bitter toward the American people for all the suffering they had brought to his country. He smiled calmly and explained, "We make a distinction between the American people and the policies of the American government. We don't blame the people for what Johnson and Nixon have done." I never liked that answer, too smooth, too diplomatic.
Last week I heard the same exact framing when Mike Wallace interviewed the president of Iran on "60 Minutes." "We don't hate the Jews. We hate Zionism." "We don't hate the Americans, we are opposed to the policies of the Bush administration."
Then it dawned on me why I had been so suspicious of Le Duc Tho's comment all these years. These two men don't understand democracy. In their countries there is a distinction between the policies of the government and the will of the people. But in our democracy, the policies of the Bush administration are an expression of our will.
George Bush isn't squandering the nation's wealth, killing Iraqi civilians and blowing up American soldiers all on his own. It is our war as well as his. It reflects our obsession with oil, our obsession with being number one, our indifference to the way we interact with the rest of the world. It is our burden, and our time to step up.
Because my generation could not learn how to speak honestly to each other about failure in Vietnam, we shouted at each other, cursed and threatened, demonstrated, occasionally rioted, and even shot at each other. In the end, the traditional of liberal democracy was crucified on the cross of Vietnam. I cannot bear the thought of going through it again.
How do we begin to talk to each other about Iraq? First, leave the origins of the war to the historians. They will judge the false premises and failed strategy soon enough. Stay focused on the reality in front of us.
Secondly, separate the war in Iraq from the war on terror. The two were never linked, despite the best efforts of the Bush administration. Failure in Iraq does not mean that we have lost or should give up on the war against terror.
Third, Iraq is now a failed state. It is in anarchy. Iraqis will have to re-invent themselves. We have no capability to impose a political solution on Iraq any more than we have imposed a military solution.
Finally, George Bush and his Cabinet will be the last admit failure. How could they? We should not expect bold solutions from them. That task is ours.
And the first bold task of all is to understand that not one more American soldier should be killed for a failed policy.