Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: Leaving Iraq now would leave even more blood on America's hands
By Gabe McVey
The Collegiate Times (Virginia Tech)
08/24/2007

(U-WIRE) BLACKSBURG, Va. — The current debate over America's involvement in Iraq seems fruitless. No faction in this contest appears to have the answer to this conundrum.

The fatal flaw in all of the wrongheaded reasoning behind the various arguments on how to move forward in Iraq is that they all assume that there are good outcomes to be had from any course taken, given the present situation.

Thrashing about in the quicksand of Iraq is only causing us to become further immersed in the slime of sectarian quarrel and confessional murder.

A leap of faith has brought us here. A devout confidence in America's fundamental nobility of purpose and a pious commitment to the belief in the global panacea of republicanism and secularism fueled a drive to war with no consideration for its potential failure.

Coupled with a one-size-fits-all approach to the problems of political Islam and the shabby remnants of Arab Socialism with Pollyannaish naivete regarding the political realities of Iraq, the Middle East and its component constituencies have exacerbated the glaring failures of imagination and planning that have led us here.

Like Kierkegaard's leap, this rush to action was made without, or in spite of, available evidence. Many a witty one-liner has been made by Al Franken or Bill Maher about Ron Suskind's anonymous Bushie and the "Reality-Based Community." But if the so-called community of realists wants to live up to its name, then it's time to realize that an abrupt end to America's involvement in Iraq could, and in my opinion almost certainly would, lead to a Khmer Rouge-style scene of carnage that liberals and other opponents of the war need to address if they wish to escape with their morality intact.

Peace, friends ... I agree that this war has been so badly mismanaged that it's beyond scandalous, and I opposed it at the beginning.

But that argument is over; re-fighting it gains us nothing.

For sheer blundering and incompetence, it's hard to top the Bush administration. The lives lost and billions wasted will hang around the necks of Republican officeholders and candidates for the foreseeable future.

However, we cannot abandon Iraq to become another in a long line of Western retreats. Can you say that if Iraq does disintegrate into a Rwanda-style killing field that pulls in surrounding nations that you won't bear some degree of moral responsibility?

Also, while the men and philosophy that led us here have been execrated as the worst kind of silly and stupid buffoons and buffoonery, respectively, is there not something to the idea that democracy, republicanism and secularism are good for societies?

Is an entire region of the world and its teeming millions to be abandoned to the darkness of evil dictators, thuggish theocrats and confessional bloodshed all in the name of "stability?"

So, while the politicians that enacted this historic error should answer for it, the Iraqis must not be made the victims of our missteps.

It also must not lead to another epoch of American retreat and disengagement from the world. To do so would consign much of the world to a second Dark Age of theocratic dictatorship, murderous confessional conflict ... and poverty, not just of the pecuniary stripe, but also of the mind and spirit.

[ Back to Student Voices ]