← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · hqz
Thread ID: 9419 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-08-31
2003-08-31 02:01 | User Profile
[url=http://www.counterpunch.org/lind08302003.html]http://www.counterpunch.org/lind08302003.html[/url]
Send the Neocons to Baghdad What is to be Done? By WILLIAM S. LIND
A number of readers of this column have said, in effect, "You are critical of our current policies in Iraq. What would you do instead?" I addressed this in an earlier column, but there are a good number of new readers, so it is probably time to revisit what I said then and perhaps add a few points.
The most important thing we should do is set a date certain for leaving Iraq and make it soon. given the time it will take to get all our troops and stuff out, we might move that to December 25. That way, it would be a Christmas present to our soldiers and to the people of Iraq as well.
. . .
Leaving Iraq will not be a defeat for America, because America never had any interests at stake in Iraq in the first place. There were no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam and Bin Laden hated each other's guts and the notion that Iraq constituted a threat to American security was pure invention. Genuine threats to American security may arise in a post-state Mesopotamia, but we have already created that monster and we will have to live with it. Folly has its consequences.
An American withdrawal from Iraq will be a defeat for the neocon clique that started the war in the first place. To that I say, "Hurrah!" The sooner the neocons are defeated and driven from power, the less the chance that American soldiers will be sent to die in more unnecessary and strategically counterproductive wars. In fact, to make the punishment fit the crime, we ought to round up every neocon in Washington and make them all "Special Representatives" to Iraq, with orders to get on the next plane to Baghdad and only come back on the last plane out. Then, we should forget to send that last plane.