Iraq: It's All Over but the Dying
In Newsweek,
Fareed Zakaria announces that we've lost the war in Iraq. To many of us, this has been obvious for some time, but Zakaria puts it eloquently and, since he is a creator of conventional opinion, his verdict matters, no matter how late it comes.
Writes Zakaria,
When Iraq's current government was formed last April, after four months of bitter disputes, wrangling and paralysis, many voices in America and in Iraq said the next six months would be the crucial testing period. That was a fair expectation. It has now been almost six months, and what we have seen are bitter disputes, wrangling and paralysis. Meanwhile, the violence has gotten worse, sectarian tensions have risen steeply and ethnic cleansing is now in full swing. There is really no functioning government south of Kurdistan, only power vacuums that have been filled by factions, militias and strongmen. It is time to call an end to the tests, the six-month trials, the waiting and watching, and to recognize that the Iraqi government has failed. It is also time to face the terrible reality that America's mission in Iraq has substantially failed.
We will leave this country to bloody itself for years in civil war. Yes, we're all glad that Saddam Hussein is gone. But is Iraq now better off?
I've been saying for some time that Iraqis will really start to turn on us when the death toll of Iraqi civilians starts to approximate the number of people who were regularly killed by Hussein—or surpasses that number.
Here's a question that we regularly ask American voters that it's about time to start asking Iraqis: Are you better off than you were four years ago?
And if the answer is no, that is not an endorsement of a dictator, but an indictment of what George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have done to Iraq.
