Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - General, has Iraq war made us safer?

Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - General, has Iraq war made us safer?
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
September 12, 2007


Here's what we really want to know, Gen. David Petraeus: Is America safer by keeping our troops in Iraq? And that, sir, is something you were unable to tell us on Tuesday as you spoke before the U.S. Senate.

"I don't know, actually," you said, responding to Republican Sen. John Warner's query about whether the Iraq war makes us more secure. "I have not sat down and sorted in my own mind. What I have focused on, and what I have been riveted on, is how to accomplish the mission of the multinational force Iraq."

Yet, President Bush -- the U.S. military commander in chief -- has long insisted that our initiative for fighting the war in Iraq was to make America more secure, to win the war on terrorism. If you can't tell us how we're doing on that front, General, then how can you characterize Iraq as a success as you have for the past two days before Congress?

Your plan to reduce U.S. troops to pre-surge levels -- removing 2,000 this month and about 30,000 more by next summer -- was certainly a move in the right direction. But we are rather less optimistic about how the war is going in Iraq and how it is making Americans feel here at home. You say the surge of troops unleashed in January has reduced violence, but other reports indicate the conflict has been reduced because 35,000 Iraqis have fled their homes in Baghdad for neighborhoods populated by members of their own sect. Tired of the fighting, these Sunnis and Shiites have found temporary relief by staying among themselves.

A BBC/ABC News poll released Monday found that more than two-thirds of Iraqis say the surge has made their lives worse. Americans are equally negative: 62 percent say the war was a mistake, 59 percent say it was not worth the cost in lives, and nearly two-thirds say the United States should reduce its troops, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll.

We've been waiting months for your analysis, General Petraeus, and we value what you have to say. Your report, more than any other assessment, was touted as the accurate reflection of our Iraqi success. Polls show that more Americans value your assessment than Bush's, 68 percent to 5 percent.

That's because we've learned from past wars to support our troops even if we disagree with the political agenda that got our people in a war zone to begin with. Our regrets about Vietnam continue to fester.

On Tuesday, under flags flying at half-staff in remembrance of 9/11, veterans debated our war strategy outside the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center on the West Side.

"In Vietnam, when we did pull out, everything collapsed," said Vietnam veteran George West, 57. "I would expect that to happen in Iraq also. We are the enemy -- religiously, politically. We are the occupier. We'll never be anything but that."

Even those who serve in Iraq are torn: ''To me, it's a deathly, conflicted, confusing situation right now. The guys are stuck between a rock and a hard place," said Army specialist Manuel Mora, 24, of Chicago, who served in Iraq from August 2003 to February 2004. "If we pull out, the insurgents come out and cause total mayhem and chaos. If we stay in, a lot more people will get hurt or won't be the same once they get back."

If our own troops are conflicted about our continued occupation in Iraq, how much more supportive can we expect Americans, who are thousands of miles away, to be?

Even Republicans listening to Petraeus on Tuesday were voicing their regrets.

Sen. Chuck Hagel from Nebraska, himself a Vietnam veteran, questioned your interpretation of the war. "Are we going to continue to invest blood and treasure at the same rate we're doing now? For what?"

Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, a fellow Republican who had not spoken out against the war, said it was clear that "we got a lot more than we bargained for" in Iraq, and that the campaign had been hobbled from the start by poor planning. Abandonment of the mission would "disgrace our country."

Withdrawal may be a long time coming.

Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, has characterized the Iraq government as "dysfunctional" and said the U.S. stay in Iraq will be even lengthier than others have admitted. "Neither of us believe, we can see beyond next summer," Crocker told the Senate Tuesday. Perhaps, General, if Americans knew they were in for a long haul in Iraq from the start, they would be less angry about our prolonged involvement there now. The White House promised this war wouldn't last long -- indeed President Bush prematurely celebrated its conclusion in 2003 in that infamous "mission accomplished" photo op aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Multiple times we've been told to wait for new analysis, new indicators, new strategies about our results -- as if the right data were waiting to be unmined that would support our continued deployment.

General, if your assessment of the war can't tell us we're safer by staying in Iraq, then perhaps you should sit down, as you say, and sort it out in your mind because Americans already have considered the cost.