The Burden of Guilt

Who lost in Iraq? That’s the question the U.S. media are busily repeating this week. In the 1950s, the question was: Who lost in China? Then they asked: Who lost in Cuba? And a little later: Who lost in Vietnam?

Americans love to ask themselves that question, perhaps because they think everything should have a logical and preferably, simple, explanation. It is also very likely that most Americans do not realize that it is inherently arrogant to pose a question about what was “lost,” or about how what was “lost” in some way belonged to the United States.

What they are really asking is, who is to blame for the current mess in Iraq after such an enormous investment was made there—in terms of lives lost and money spent. It is this questioning that opens a Pandora’s box, given the long list of villains.

Leading the list is President George W. Bush, who declared war on Iraq with no legitimate reasons. He ignored warnings from 54 nations who said that his venture could destabilize the entire region. That prophecy has now come true. Bush went to war under the pretext of the famous, but non-existent, weapons of mass destruction. He also talked about Saddam Hussein’s support for al-Qaida, which was also nonexistent. Later, the political spin-doctors arrived at the Bush White House and reframed the message. They simply suddenly recast the message and made it about democratizing Iraq. What is happening today in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon should be a lesson for the big shots who want to make us believe that democracy is an export product like movies and Coca Cola.

As one would expect in a climate of embittered political exasperation, Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are endeavoring to blame President Barack Obama for having honored the wishes of the American people in the complete withdrawal of troops. According to these Republicans, if enough U.S. soldiers had remained in the distressed nation, there would now be peace in Iraq. Of course, these two untiring contrarians don’t say a word as to how long they would leave young American soldiers involved in the religious war between two Arab sects—a war that started in the seventh century and for which there is no end in sight.

Another culprit is Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki who, using his partisan style of governing, has brazenly favored his own religious sect and exacerbated its historical animosity with other sects. We can also blame the former colonial powers which did a poor job of dividing up the lands of this mythical paradise on earth. In the final analysis, the true culprits are the Iraqis who use bombs to discuss their religious differences.

Obama is correct to affirm that not one American soldier will ever again step foot on Iraqi soil again. He also emphasized that the U.S. cannot simply sit back in the face of a threat from a belligerent country whose goal is to attack the U.S. The current situation is sensitive and will require a carefully crafted response—but not intervening again in the affairs of another country. Each time the U.S. intervenes, even if it is in a minimal way, such as in Egypt and Libya, it provokes enough political instability to make the situation for citizens, in the country that is supposedly being defended, deteriorate compared to how it was before the intervention.

Clearly, resolving the military conflict is urgent, but in the future, it may be necessary to resuscitate Joe Biden’s idea of dividing the country into three regions, modifying his proposal in order to create three independent governments: one for the Kurds, another for the Shiites and a third for the Sunnis.