Your turn at the Soapbox

On my ride into work I pass this little barber shop in a seedy area of town. I have never seen a soul in there but I couldn’t help but notice the sign that hangs in their front window.

If we can’t make you look good, you’re ugly!

While I doubt this brings in too many customers it has stuck in my mind.

I can’t help but think that the same is true for the situation in Iraq. No matter how much we try to pretty it up, it is just plain ugly. No amount of hand-wringing or optimism will change the fact that we are in a situation that we should never have gotten into in the first place.

I think it is telling that we don’t even know what it would mean to ‘win’ this conflict. Deposing Saddam, we thought that was winning. Helping the govt. to be established, thought that was winning too. The sad fact is, there is no way to ‘win’. The reasons we went there have changed so much that I don’t think we really know why we are there anymore. The world isn’t safer, Iraq is arguably a breeding ground for terrorism. Saddam is gone, which is great, but the world is full of tyrants and I fear that another type of tyranny will take his torch and run with it.

In America, our lives are comfortable enough that we can sit around and pontificate about the virtues of democracy. But in other countries, as many of us know from our missions, having enough to eat is a more pressing matter. Historically, the only democracy that people from the Middle East have known was imperialism which was synonymous with exploitation. So we are now trying to reform their country in our own image, afraid that if we left them to do things on their own, they would choose to have a government that we could not support.

Is the Middle East thirsting for democracy? Arguably, no. Is it always what is best for them? That’s a tough one. In Russia I met scores of people who cursed the democratic changes that took place in the 90’s because now they have nothing to eat.

Democracy is not something you can give to people. They have to want it, make it for themselves. If not, if you try to force it on people they either reject it or use it in ways we don’t like. Case in point: Hamas.

I wish I had some brilliant point to all of this. The sad truth is I have no clue what I think we should do from here. I don’t think there is a good answer, the only options are ugly from here on out.

I don’t want any more of our soldiers to die fighting a battle we can’t win. A battle they never should have been put in. But, I don’t want Iraq to regress any further than it has. I fear, though, in spite of all our best efforts, we cannot prevent it.

I remember one professor I had at the University of Utah who talked about what he thought would happen in Iraq if we went to war there. He drew a big map of Iraq and split it in three pieces. He talked about how the borders of Iraq were drawn by an British civil servant who had no understanding of the different peoples who lived there, he was just concerned with divvying up the land for the British installed leaders in the region. Here we are, now, still trying to get three different groups to be one homogeneous group. You would think we learned some lessons from British colonialism, but ten again, maybe not. I agree with my professor, it just isn’t going to happen.

I don’t want to be partisan but I am frustrated with those who got us into this mess without thinking it through. There was no justification, and trying to sow democracy was just an afterthought.

I’m just a s patriotic as the next guy, I like to think that I am a little more, perhaps. I want victory, success and prosperity. But isn’t it time we admit we really screwed up. As mistakes go, this one is a biggy, monumental. even. Again I have no solutions, I don’t pretend to think anyone in politics has any great ideas, and I surely don’t have any better ones. I’m just sad and frustrated that fellow Americans are dying for the country we love, and doing it for reasons that were either false or contrived.