Fuck Peter Beinart

The cost of war

TRB FROM WASHINGTON
We Broke It
by Peter Beinart

Across ideological lines, American politicians and pundits are finally coming to a consensus on Iraq: It's the Iraqis' fault. "We gave the Iraqis their freedom," pronounced liberal California Senator Barbara Boxer on November 16. "What are they doing with this freedom? They're killing each other." The next day, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer heartily concurred, writing: "We have given the Iraqis a republic, and they do not appear able to keep it."

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Shia and Sunni Iraqis are not turning on one another because of ancient, primordial hatreds. They're turning on one another because when the state fails in its most basic task--keeping you alive--you turn to any entity that can. Imagine you're in prison. The state (embodied by the prison guards) doesn't protect you, and the hallways are controlled by racial gangs. If your survival depends on it, you'll develop a neo-Nazi or Nation of Islam identity awfully fast.
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In this dismal, often Hobbesian environment, those Iraqis who could (the more secular middle class) fled. Among those who remained, sectarian entrepreneurs like Moqtada Al Sadr leveraged their preexisting networks to provide services, jobs, safety, and--increasingly--revenge. As sectarian militias offered the protection that the state could not, sect began replacing nation as the primary identity of many Iraqis. That shouldn't surprise us. Identity is not static, and, in war zones, as anyone who followed Sarajevo in the '90s can attest, it can shift very fast. "Once Iraqis are safely ... settled in Amman," notes Iraqi-born scholar Hala Fattah, "bonds of civility [between Sunni and Shia] reemerge."

It may be too late for the United States to provide the security required for those bonds of civility to return to Iraq. But we should, at least, have the decency to acknowledge that it was Americans (not Iraqis) who bore the responsibility under international law to provide security after Americans (not Iraqis) overthrew Saddam. It was we who failed and then handed Iraqi politicians the poisoned chalice of a government that did not sit atop a state. To be sure, Iraq's elected leaders are an uninspiring bunch. But the state fell, the army was disbanded, chaos reigned, the insurgency began, reconstruction faltered, and the die was cast in 2003-- before Iraqis first went to the polls.

When Donald Rumsfeld said, as looters ransacked Baghdad while U.S. troops watched, that "freedom's untidy," Democrats rightly denounced his comments as an abdication and a disgrace. Now, more than three years later, it is just as disgraceful for Barbara Boxer to echo them. If we need to leave; we need to leave. But let's not pretend the defeat is anyone else's but our own

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INCIVILITY ALERT

Peter,

You fucking gutless chairborne coward. Now, you think this monstrosity is a mistake? An ooops. A slight problem.

You clueless, asslicking simpleton, you made this happen. All you bright young cowards behind your desks cheering on Bush in his war to remake the savages and help Israel. Yeah, that worked. Ask Nasrallah how scared he is of the IDF after kicking their asses.

Peter, uncutous would be a kind word to describe what you are, so I will use another description, war pimp.

You sold this war like it was going to work, like it was the perfect solution to a boogeyman Bush created. Saddam.

We were going to liberate Iraq and make them just like us. And you yipped along like a little dog, cheering on this fiasco like someone would gain from this. And then, when you saw this little adventure was going the way of all colonial wars, into bitter secterianism and brutal failure, you kept cheering, as if we cheered hard enough, the brown people would finally listen to us.

When the Iraqis elected a bunch of crackpots and called it a parliment, here came the yips again. You waved the purple finger and saw happy days, while the war got worse, it always got worse, you never admitted you didn't know what the fuck you were babbling about. You and the cheetos brigade kept talking about this Iraq which only existed in your mind.

Not that you ever really believed in this war. You didn't believe in shit. Not enough to actually fight it. Sure, you liked the rhetoric of the war on terror, but not enough to risk anything more than carpel tunnel syndrome.

Men are judged by their deeds. And your deeds add up to a rank, vulgar cowardice, the kind which eminates from the body like days old stink.

You imagine yourself to be a serious man, a man of ideas. Well, in the real world, you're just another bullshitting coward, rejoicing in the deaths of men far better than you.