Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Yesterday's bomb blast at the UN compound in Iraq upped the ante in the ongoing guerrilla war against the occupying forces and their perceived collaborators, and certainly demonstrated (if any further proof were needed) that there is now a significant and well-organized body of terrorists active in Iraq. While the New York Times makes the obvious point that the US occupation has succeeded in creating a target for enraged fanatics around the Middle East (much as the US bases in Saudi Arabia provided the original organizing principle for Al Qaeda), the Wall Street Journal witlessly connects the dots thusly:
In an important sense, of course, this is merely validating what some of us have said all along about the war in Iraq. The link between Saddam and al Qaeda might not have been provable beyond a reasonable doubt, but they shared the common purpose of ousting the U.S. from the Middle East. Now the foreign jihadis flooding the country are proving the point by joining up with Baath Party remnants that want to restore Saddam's terrorist rule.
In other words, the fact that the US occupation has created a coalition of interest between Al Qaeda and the remnants of the Ba'ath party proves that this connection - whose allegation served to justify the invasion in the first place - actually existed all along. This is a new low in logic, even for the Wall Street Journal, but that's what it takes to find justification for the Bush policy these days.
Every dire prediction of the war skeptics from last winter is being exceeded by the daily parade of atrocities issuing from Iraq. The costs in time, dollars and human lives appear to be open-ended, while the benefits to the US, the region and the Iraqi people are proving more and more illusory. As the original rationale for the action recedes from view and the existence of even weapons programs, much less the weapons themselves, is thrown into doubt by the reticence of otherwise-cooperative Iraqi scientists, the post-invasion conditions of the country are being used to retroactively justify the situation that gave rise to them.
This leaves keepers of the neo-con faith to weigh the current mess against that old favorite, “the costs of doing nothing” – as if we could somehow trust these clueless strategists to accurately predict some alternate reality on the basis of their own prejudices and faulty and distorted intelligence reports. The “costs of doing something” are proving pretty high indeed as the US continues to commit its resources and credibility to a situation that grows worse by the minute.
Bush and his coterie may have gotten into this situation with the best intentions, and now that we are there, a premature withdrawal would only make the situation worse. But sooner or later, Bush will have to be judged on results, not theories. He rolled the dice, he took a risk. Now the whole country is signed up to cover his reckless bet.
