America is in Iraq on the pretext of WMD’s-chemical, biological and nuclear.Before the invasion, whenever the administration officials were pressed about proof of the smoking gun that would justify a military intervention; the scare tactic they used was “The smoking gun could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” They were pressing the nuclear argument to get the people terrified into supporting this ill-conceived mission.

The nuclear argument was thoroughly debunked by the CIA and removed from the president’s speech in Oct 2002. However the bogus argument that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Niger made its way into the 2003 state of the Union speech given by the president. The idea was to inject fear among the public so that the majority opinion could be swayed in favor of the Iraq invasion. It was too easy.

Then we found out there were no WMD’s The argument made then to keep the people on board was “Aren’t you glad Saddam is not in power anymore? Would you prefer this ruthless dictator in control of the people of Iraq? ” The minute you answered “Yes ” to this question you were in the camp of “Iraq invasion yielded some good irrespective of the original rationale.” Anyone who criticized the war because of the faulty WMD rationale was called unpatriotic. This was a great scare tactic against the democrats. The 2004 democratic presidential candidates fell for this fear and fine tuned their criticism of the war in such a convoluted way that it was hard to comprehend. Nobody could understand the democratic position on the war. The people rejected the lack of clarity among democrats and it cost them dearly in 2004 cycle. Bush used “terrorism, terrorism , 9/11, 9/11″ to scare people into voting for him

In 2006 the democrats finally woke up and came out strongly critical of the war. Many acknowledged that it was a mistake to vote for the resolution authorizing force in Oct 2002. The republicans tried to use the same scare tactics “9/11″, “if we leave Iraq the terrorists will follow us here”, and “we are fighting them there so that we don’t have to fight him here.” People wised up and did not buy these arguments anymore and voted the democrats into the majority, both in the house and the senate. It is like the story wherein a kid falsely cries “WOLF”. People respond to him for the first and the second time but on the third they don’t. Similarly people bought these bogus arguments in 2002 and 2004 election cycles but by 2006 the lies were old and a majority were not willing to be fooled again.

Now the new scare tactic made by the administration to continue this mis adventure is “If we leave Iraq now, there will be a regional war.” At this point it is very plausible that it could happen. Looking at the chaos and blood bath that exists today the era of Saddam does not look so bad. Now these young men and women are caught in the cross-hairs of a civil war that may go on for decades. The prospect of a regional war and genocide is a direct result of deposing Saddam. This guy was a dictator but he held the place together and there was stability in the region. Even the people in Iraq would gladly trade today’s chaos and insecurity for Saddam’s reign. That’s how bad things have gotten in Iraq. A rotten dictator looks better compared to the American occupation.

We have to involve the regional leaders diplomatically because the Iraq civil war spilling over into their countries will harm their interests. Therefore there is good reason to believe that they will be partners to bring political stability in the region. All we need to do is ask. The presidents reasoning to continue the current occupation and escalate it further is to prevent the regional war.This is delusional. This country’s young men and women are cannon fodder for insurgents, Shia and Sunni alike. There is no mission. We cannot be scared into continuing the Iraq war to prevent the regional war.

Americans must withdraw gradually from Iraq and put pressure on the leaders to reach political consensus for overall stability. The Arab leaders in the region must be involved because Iraq is their backyard and if it devolves into chaos it would foster instability in their own countries. Once this is done American forces must leave and let the Iraqis nurture their fledgling democracy. We baby sat them for quite a while and now we must let them rule themselves.

If a regional war/genocide ensues after we leave then we must go through the United Nations to intervene and bring in peace keepers, and more diplomatic pressure to stop it. This route would bring back America’s credibility and respect for international law and international organizations.

Bush and Cheney are less worried about regional war and more concerned about the Iraq fiasco being their legacy. From the beginning fear was the only tactic used by the administration to rally public opinion. The most recent fear is the prospect of regional war/genocide. People don’t buy this argument and it is incumbent upon democrats to pull all strings possible to withdraw sooner rather than later. They need not worry that American people will blame them for loosing this war because most Americans now believe the war is already lost and that it has reached a point of no return. Iraq is already in a civil war and things can get slightly worse when we leave but that is no reason to continue to take casualties.

The dream of Iraq being a stable, vibrant, inclusive democracy seems less and less likely with every passing day. At this point our aim is to just cut our losses. We cannot correct one mistake with a series of new ones. We should not be scared to continue this endless occupation of Iraq by the prediction of a regional war.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.