Freedom Is $175B

My provocative post stirred up some mud among conservatives, with several calling me a racist.

They get off on feeling good about their foreign policy motives (apparently without checking the results). How strange that the liberals are the ones left arguing realpolitik these days. But, let's be honest here: Do you really think the American people would support a war solely to liberate an oppressed people?

If so, what's wrong with illustrating that with an Iraqi flag?

But we don't have to ask questions like that. We know the answer. Now that the Iraqi debacle has been washed of its pretenses, and all we are left with is American soldiers and Marines dying every day, and car bombs shattering the illusion of an emerging democracy, support for this war is dropping to Vietnam-esque levels.

The right wingers like to pretend that they're noble liberators, but that's not how this war was sold, and now that that's the only justification left, America wants a refund. As a nation, we're not so much into the nation building/empire thing. This frustrates the left and the right. I'd like to see real action on the genocide in Sudan, and Afghanistan needs much more help than it's getting. And then there's the issue of promoting democracy among our allies, like Pakistan and Uzbekistan. But it seems we're otherwise occupied.

Mitch Berg "fisks" me at his blog. Skipping over the boring preamble, let's get into the heart of the matter.

Dunno how old Luke Francl was in 1975. Me? I was 12, but paid lots of attention to the news. It didn't take a 12 year old rocket scientist to see what "peace" with "honor" led to; millions of dead, inconvenient yellow people. "Peace with honor" was a slogan, adopted because it played in Peoria better than "flight with genocide". It's a genocide - really several genocides, in Cambodia and the Central Highlands and Laos - that the left admits existed only in the most sterile, clinical possible terms to this very day.

"Peace with honor" was a myth, and I don't actually think we'll find it in Iraq. I just wish we could. We don't have any good options left in Iraq. In fact, I think the best case scenario at this point is a nice, stable quasi-democratic Islamic theocracy a la Iran, after an embarrassing US withdrawal, which conservatives like Berg will try to blame on folks like me who never wanted to kick the hornet's nest in the first place. The more likely scenario is a three-way civil war and a lawless haven for international terrorists.

"containment" is a meaningless concept when it comes to terror

But not for state actors, like Saddam.

the ties with Quaeda are murky (go figure - terrorists and all)

Murky? I can't believe the war hawks' standard of proof is "you can't prove a negative." Show me one solid --or, hell, "murky" -- piece of evidence for a Saddam/Al Qaeda connection that hasn't been totally discredited (this includes Laurie Mylroie conspiracy theories, impossible meetings in Prague, and Al Zarqarwi operating out of Kurdistan). Wait. Don't show me. FedEx this heretofore unknown evidence directly to George W. Bush. Evidence that he wasn't lying through his teeth about Iraq should help him shore up his poll numbers.

every significant government in the world believed he had WMD including the nations that supplied him with their precursors

Weapons inspectors (backed up with the threat of force and/or air strikes) would have sufficed to learn the truth. And as a matter of fact, Hans Blix did learn the truth.

Couldn't leave "well enough" alone - where "well enough" equalled mass murder, children's prisons, rape camps, plastic shredders, hands pounded with hammers, tongues cut out...

In case Mitch didn't notice, when Bush bumbled into Baghdad, we were in the middle of a war. A war against Al Qaeda. Bush did his damnedest to make Iraq seem like part of that war, but it wasn't. It was no different than all the other tin-pot dictatorships all around the world that we have not found it in our national interest to occupy. Like Uzbekistan, where the US and Russia just blocked an inquiry into the shooting of hundreds of protesters.

Conservatives combine a toxic mixture of historical blindness and unlimited faith in their leaders. Mitch and his pals at Power Line show this to a fault. No amount of evidence (or lack of evidence) will ever convince them they were wrong about Iraq. No civilian body count will ever convince them that it was wrong to overthrow a horrible, but stable, dictatorship that was not a threat to us. No level of abuse by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib, Bagran, or Guantanamo will ever convince them that we have lost the moral high ground. No recruiting failure will ever convince them that this war has lost its support. No terrorist attack anywhere in the world will be seen as a failure to combat Al Qaeda. No future civil war or theocratic regime in Iraq will ever be blamed on Bush's failed policy.

No, they'll blame liberals. Because we didn't clap hard enough.

P.S.: Mitch does say one thing I agree with: "Freedom isn't free. It's also not always convenient, clear-cut or painless." Trouble is, our leaders haven't made this clear. If we're going to win in Iraq, sacrifices will need to be made. But Bush has never asked for sacrifice. He asked us to go shopping. Now it's too late. God bless our troops who are over there risking their lives, but they aren't enough. Who's going to make the sacrifice for Iraqi freedom? That was my entire point.