IRAQTIFYING THE SITUATION

Radio Free Mike Moore is curious what my Iraq plan is, since I’m so critical of New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.

Domestically and internationally, the Iraq war has been a disaster for us, for all the reasons I stated before we actually hit the ground. But I didn’t say I had a better postwar idea to advocate, and nor should I. The effort would be wasted; we aren’t leaving Iraq any time soon.

I support -- with as much grumbling and condemnation as possible for the idiots who got us into this mess -- spending and doing what we need to in Iraq to not have our efforts there be a complete loss and utter disaster. As I said Sept. 15, “Thanks to Bush administration hubris, now we have to spend what it takes to get out of Iraq and leave it better than we found it -- and it looks like the expense will go some distance toward wrecking life for many Americans.”

But what the hell: Fantasizing about what passes for an ideal world these days, I would get the United States out of the business of running Iraq and let the United Nations do it instead. U.S. soldiers would stay not to build a nation, but to supplement protection of U.N. forces and hunt down anyone continuing to attack them. Then, job done more quickly because their efforts and motivations were not split, the U.S. soldiers would leave. I would remove all the no-bid corporations rebuilding Iraq, and possibly even those who did bid for the work, and instead use that money to pay Iraqis to rebuild their own country. First-worlders can be consultants; they -- we -- shouldn’t be taking jobs and money away from Iraqis.

Again, I do not think any of this will happen. Not as long as President Bush is in office.

Before the war began, I was intrigued and, despite myself, impressed with Bush’s mad bomber act, in which he portrayed himself as so eager to fight that nations did his bidding just to calm him down. I winced as Bush went too far, tarring nations as being in an “Axis of Evil” even as they followed China, at a distance, toward moderation. But I was amused to see him force U.N. inspectors back into Iraq and Iraq back into compliance with the U.N. He was saying “Jump,” and the world was saying, “All right, all right, all right! Just calm down!”

Unfortunately, it really wasn’t an act. Bush really was the mad bomber I thought he was playing in TV, and in an effort to make us safer, he has given Islamists a recruiting tool; claiming Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were in cahoots, he has succeeded in convincing them to work toward the same ends in attacking U.S. soldiers and U.N. and Red Cross workers; seeking to sound the warnings against weapons of mass destruction, he has accelerated nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea; because he’s made such a mess of the war on terrorism, he’ll probably have to watch helplessly as his great Democratic experiment in the Middle East collapses further into increased religious fervor and anti-Americanism.

This is what we have accomplished or will accomplish on our present tack, but neither Bush nor Friedman can afford to agree. Their attitudes, that one need not admit mistakes, just revise history to suit new needs, is no way to correct the situation.

So I’m not seriously looking for the United States to pull out of Iraq. I’m merely hoping without real hope for an acknowledgment that our occupation is doomed, in one way or another, because we were misguided going in.